Rebecca W. Doerge, Carnegie Mellon University and Award Committee Chair; Christian Genest, McGill University; and Erica E.M. Moodie, McGill University

The Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies selected Nancy Reid, professor in the department of statistical sciences at the University of Toronto, to give the Distinguished Achievement Award Lecture at the 2022 Joint Statistical Meetings in Washington, DC. Her talk is titled “Likelihood and Its Discontents.”

Reid’s work has had a major impact on the development of statistical theory. She has made unique contributions to the linking of modern themes and traditional concepts in statistical science. As noted by Jon Wellner, who supported Reid’s nomination, “She has contributed fundamental and path-breaking work in a wide range of statistical problems, including nonparametric estimation for survival data, applications of differential geometry to statistics, conditional inference, profile and composite likelihood methods, higher order asymptotics, connections between Bayes and frequentist methods, and … the list goes on.” Her work is also wide-ranging, and she has shown an aptitude for focusing on problems with a high practical impact and reward. The clarity of her writing and her attention to detail have enhanced her lifetime interest in bringing statistical thinking to nonspecialists.

Reid studied at the University of Waterloo (BMath 1974), University of British Columbia (MSc 1976), Stanford University (PhD 1979), and Imperial College, London (PDF 1980). She joined the University of Toronto in 1986 from the University of British Columbia. She has held several leadership roles in statistical science, including editor or associate editor for several leading journals, department chair (1997–2002), president of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (1996–1997), vice president of the International Statistical Institute (1999–2001), president of the Statistical Society of Canada (2004–2005), and director of the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute (2015–2019).

Reid’s early research on bivariate influence functions and functional expansions provided theoretical and practical tools for the analysis of censored data. Her 1987 paper with the late Sir David Cox on orthogonal parameters and approximate conditional inference, read to the Royal Statistical Society, has been influential. Her work has led to new approximation techniques and a deeper understanding of the foundations of statistical inference. The author of numerous books and papers, Reid maintains an active research profile focused in part on the investigation of the relationship between significance functions and Bayesian posterior distributions and generalized fiducial inference and inferential models.

Among her many awards, Reid was the first woman to receive the COPSS Presidents’ Award (1992), the first recipient of the Canadian Mathematical Society’s Krieger-Nelson Prize (1995), a Wald Lecturer in 2000, and the 2009 Gold Medalist of the Statistical Society of Canada. In 2016, the Royal Statistical Society awarded her the Guy Medal in Silver.

Reid is a fellow of the American Statistical Association, Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is a corresponding fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a foreign associate of the US National Academy of Sciences, and an appointed officer of the Order of Canada. Her authoritative contributions to the theory of statistical inference, commitment to excellence in statistical applications, and outstanding service to the community make her an apt recipient of the COPSS Distinguished Achievement Award and Lectureship.