The Joint Statistical Computing and Statistical Graphics Section recently honored Douglas Bates with the 2023 ASA Statistical Computing and Graphics Award. The citation reads:

Bates is an emeritus professor in the department of statistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He earned his PhD in statistics from Queen’s University at Kingston in 1978. After being on the mathematics faculty at the University of Alberta, he joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1980 and chaired the department from 1991 to 1994.

Bates has published two books and more than 40 papers. He has served on the editorial boards of the SIAM Journal of Scientific and Statistical Computing (1983–1984), The American Statistician (1989), Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics (1990–1993), and Current Index to Statistics (1998–2003). He became a fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1992.

Bates has contributed significantly to the development of S and R languages. He is a founding member of the R Development Core Team and is well known for his contribution to the development and implementation of mixed-effects models. He is one of the major developers of the three widely used packages for mixed-effects models: “nlme” (for S and R); “lme4” (for R); and “MixedModels” (for Julia).

The ASA Statistical Computing and Graphics Award is the most prestigious award bestowed by the sections. It recognizes an individual or team for innovation in computing, software, or graphics that has had a significant impact on statistical practice or research. Past award winners include Howard Wainer (2021), Luke Tierney (2019), Bill Cleveland (2016), and Robert Gentleman and Ross Ihaka (2010).

The award committee consisted of Usha Govindarajulu and Jun Yan, the past and present chairs of the Section on Statistical Computing, and Simon Urbanek and Ed Mulrow, the past and present chairs of the Section on Statistical Graphics.

The award will be presented at the 2023 Joint Statistical Meetings. Additionally, there will be an invited session honoring Bates, organized by Yazhen Wang, at JSM 2023.