The Penn State Department of Statistics held the 2015 Rao Prize Conference May 14 to honor the following three prize recipients:

• C. R. and Bhargavi Rao Prize – Sir David R. Cox, professor emeritus of statistics and honorary fellow of Nuffield College at the University of Oxford
• P. R. Krishnaiah Lecturer – Nancy M. Reid, professor of statistical sciences at the University of Toronto
• C. G. Khatri Lecturer – Vijay V. Raghavan, Alfred and Helen Lamson Endowed Professor in Computer Science at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette

About 100 researchers attended the conference.

The conference program consisted of three plenary speakers, four invited speakers, and a poster presentation by postdoctoral and graduate students. Plenary speakers were Cox, Reid, and Raghavan. Invited speakers included Aurore Delaigle of the University of Melbourne, Bing Li of Penn State, Runze Li of Penn State, and Jeffrey Racine of McMaster University.

Sir David Cox gives the 2015 C.R. and Bhargavi Rao Lecture.

A highlight of the conference was the awarding of the 2015 Rao Prize to Cox, who is an elected fellow of the Royal Society of London, honorary fellow of the British Academy, foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, foreign member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, foreign member of the Indian National Academy of Science, and foreign associate of the Indian Academy of Sciences. He was a winner of the Guy Medal in Silver in 1961 and the Guy Medal in Gold in 1973 of the Royal Statistical Society, the Kettering Prize and Gold Medal for Cancer Research in 1990, and the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in 2010. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1985 and served as editor of Biometrika from 1966 to 1991. He also served as president of the Bernoulli Society, Royal Statistical Society, and International Statistical Institute. Cox has received honorary doctoral degrees from Harvard University, Oxford University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Toronto, Waterloo University, and many others.

From left: Runze Li, C.R. Rao, and graduate students Zhanxiong Xu and Ningtao Wang

The conference also highlighted Reid and Raghavan. Reid is an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a recipient of the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies Presidents’ Award in 1992, the Krieger-Nelson Prize in 1995, the Statistical Society of Canada Gold Medal in 2009, and the Statistical Society of Canada Distinguished Service Award in 2013. Raghavan is a recipient of the Web Intelligence Consortium Outstanding Service Award, the Association for Computing Machinery Distinguished Scientist Award, and the IEEE International Conference on Data Mining Outstanding Service Award.

The C.R. and Bhargavi Rao Prize was established to recognize outstanding and influential innovations in the theory and practice of mathematical statistics, international leadership in directing statistics research, and pioneering contributions by a recognized leader in the field of statistics.

The C. G. Khatri Memorial Lectureship and P. R. Krishnaiah Memorial Lectureship honor the memory of C. G. Khatri and P. R. Krishnaiah by inviting outstanding researchers in statistics to deliver lectures at Penn State.

Read more about the conference.