Lester R. Curtin Award

The Lester R. (Randy) Curtin Award was established recently to help promising young health statisticians get the skills and training they need to make significant contributions in their area of study. The award was created to honor Randy’s memory and his long career of working tirelessly to teach and mentor his colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. Awardees receive support for travel to the ASA’s annual Conference on Statistical Practice.

Applications and questions should be sent to the ASA office at pamela@amstat.org or 732 North Washington Street, Alexandria, VA 22314, attention Award Nominations. The nomination deadline is October 15.

Gertrude M. Cox Award

The Gertrude M. Cox Award Committee is seeking nominees for the 2014 Gertrude M. Cox Award, which includes a $1,000 honorarium, paid travel expenses to attend the Washington Statistical Society’s annual dinner, and a commemorative plaque.

The award was established in 2003 through a joint agreement between the Washington Statistical Society (WSS) and RTI International. It annually recognizes a statistician in early to mid-career (fewer than 15 since earning a terminal degree) who has made significant contributions to one or more of the areas of applied statistics in which Gertrude Cox worked: survey methodology, experimental design, biostatistics, and statistical computing.

In 1945, Gertrude Cox became director of the Institute of Statistics of the Consolidated University of North Carolina. In the 1950s, as head of the department of experimental statistics at North Carolina State College, she played a key role in establishing mathematical statistics and biostatistics departments at The University of North Carolina. Upon her retirement from North Carolina State University in 1960, Cox became the first head of the statistical research division at newly founded RTI. She was a founding member of the International Biometric Society (IBS) and, in 1949, became the first woman elected into the International Statistical Institute. She served as president of both The American Statistical Association (1956) and the IBS (1968–1969). In 1975, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

The award is presented at the WSS annual dinner, usually held in June, with the recipient delivering a talk on a topic of general interest to the WSS membership before the dinner.

Email your nominations to Karol Krotki at kkrotki@rti.org by February 28 with a supporting statement and CV (or link).

If you have previously nominated a candidate and you wish that nomination to be reconsidered, please update the supporting materials.

This award is made possible by funding from RTI International, and the recipient is chosen by a six-person committee—three each from WSS and RTI. This year’s committee consists of WSS President Nancy Bates (co-chair), Past President Keith Rust, and President-elect Diane Herz, along with Safaa Amer, Phil Kott, and Karol Krotki (co-chair) from RTI. Past recipients, in chronological order, include Sharon Lohr, Alan Zaslavsky, Tom Belin, Vance Berger, Francesca Domenici, Thomas Lumley, Jean Opsomer, Michael Elliott, Nilanjan Chatterjee, Amy Herring, and Frauke Kreuter.

Lingzi Lu Memorial Award

Through the Lingzi Lu Memorial Award, the ASA and International Chinese Statistical Association support the studies of similarly dedicated people who are in master’s programs in statistics or who have recently earned their master’s degree in statistics. The award not only honors the memory of Lingzi, who was killed in the Boston Marathon bombing, but also the talented statistician she would have become. The award will provide support for travel to the ASA’s 2015 Conference on Statistical Practice. Visit the awards website for information and an application.

If you have questions, contact the committee chair, Ivan Siu Fung Chan, at ivan_chan@merck.com. Nominations should be sent to the ASA office at pamela@amstat.org or 732 North Washington Street, Alexandria, VA 22314, attention Award Nominations. The nomination deadline is October 15.

Julius Shiskin Award

Nominations are invited for the annual Julius Shiskin Memorial Award for Economic Statistics. The award is given in recognition of unusually original and important contributions to the development of economic statistics or in the use of statistics in interpreting the economy. Contributions can be in development of new statistical measures, statistical research, use of economic statistics to analyze and interpret economic activity, development of statistical tools, management of statistical programs, or application of data production techniques.

The award was established in 1980 in memory of Julius Shiskin, who had a varied and remarkable public service career. At the time of his death in 1978, “Julie” was the commissioner for the Bureau of Labor Statistics and earlier served as the chief statistician at the Office of Management and Budget and chief economic statistician and assistant director of the Census Bureau. Shiskin published Signals of Recession and Recovery, which laid the groundwork for the calculation of monthly economic indicators, and he developed the monthly Census report Business Conditions Digest to disseminate them to the public.

Individuals and groups in the public or private sector from any country can be nominated. The award will be presented with an honorarium of $1,000 plus additional recognition from the sponsors. Visit the award website to view a nomination form and list of all previous recipients. Nominations must be received by March 15.

For more information, contact Steven Paben, Julius Shiskin award committee secretary, at paben.steven@bls.gov.

This award is cosponsored by the Washington Statistical Society, National Association for Business Economics, and the ASA Business and Economics Statistics Section.

Mortimer Spiegelman Award

The Applied Public Health Statistics Section of the American Public Health Association (APHA) invites nominations for the 2014 Mortimer Spiegelman Award, which honors a statistician below the age of 40 in the calendar year of the award who has made outstanding contributions to health statistics, especially public health statistics. The award was established in 1970 and is presented annually at the APHA meeting.

The award serves the following three purposes

• To honor the outstanding achievements of both the recipient and Spiegelman
• To encourage further involvement in public health by the finest young statisticians
• To increase awareness of APHA and the Applied Public Health Statistics Section in the academic statistical community

To be eligible, a candidate must have been born in 1975 or later. Please email a nominating letter that states the candidate’s date of birth and how their contributions relate to public health concerns, up to three letters of support, and the candidate’s CV to the award committee chair, Sudipto Banerjee, at baner009@umn.edu by April 1.

Details about the award, including a list of past recipients, visit the Applied Public Health Statistics Section of APHA website.