The Washington Statistical Society (WSS) and RTI International (RTI) recently announce that Dipankar Bandyopadhyay, a professor in the department of biostatistics at Virginia Commonwealth University, was selected as the 2020 recipient of the Gertrude M. Cox Award.
Bandyopadhyay, who earned his PhD in 2006 from the University of Georgia, has contributed substantially to the field of biostatistics, specifically Bayesian statistics, statistical methods for correlated data, survival analysis, and spatiotemporal modeling. On the substantive side, he has developed statistical methods for shedding light on topics such as oral epidemiology, sexual recidivism, cancer, substance abuse, and alcohol addiction. He has numerous publications to his credit, has received several awards, and has been active in the ASA community. He was elected an ASA Fellow in 2018.
Bandyopadhyay was slated to deliver the Cox Award Talk, titled “Personalized Dynamic Treatment Regimes in Oral Health: A Statistical Perspective,” virtually at 11 a.m. EDT on July 15.
The Gertrude M. Cox award was established in 2003 through a joint agreement between the WSS and RTI to recognize statisticians in early to mid-career (roughly no more than 15 years after terminal degree) who have made significant contributions to statistical practice.
The award is in memory of Gertrude M. Cox (1900–1978). In 1945, 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 RTI Statistical Research Division. She was a founding member of the International Biometric Society (IBS) and, in 1949, became the first woman elected to the International Statistical Institute. She served as president of both the American Statistical Association (1956) and IBS (1968–1969). In 1975, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
This award is made possible by funding from RTI, and the honoree is chosen by a six-person committee—three each from WSS and RTI. The award includes a $1,000 honorarium, paid travel expenses to attend the Cox Award presentation/WSS Annual Dinner, and a commemorative plaque. Past recipients include Sharon Lohr, Alan Zaslavsky, Tom Belin, Vance Berger, Francesca Domenici, Thomas Lumley, Jean Opsomer, Michael Elliott, Nilanjan Chatterjee, Amy Herring, Frauke Kreuter, Jerome Reiter, Jae Kwang Kim, Bhramar Mukherjee, Elizabeth A. Stuart, David Haziza, and Courtney Kennedy.
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