Waksberg Award
The 2025 recipient of the Waksberg Award is Michael (Mike) Hidiroglou, who has worked for almost 40 years as a survey methodologist at Statistics Canada and is well known for his contributions to business surveys, development of estimation systems, and research in survey methodology. Hidiroglou will give the Waksberg Invited Address at the Statistics Canada Symposium in 2025 and write a paper planned for publication in the December 2025 issue of Survey Methodology.
Survey Methodology established an annual invited paper series in honor of Joseph Waksberg in 2001 to recognize his contributions to survey statistics and methodology. Each year, a prominent survey statistician is chosen to write a paper that reviews the development and current state of an important topic in survey statistics and methodology, reflecting the mixture of theory and practice that characterized Waksberg’s work.
Waksberg was a giant in survey sampling for nearly seven decades, beginning at the US Census Bureau in 1940 and moving to Westat in 1973, where he served as chair of the board from 1990 until his death in 2006. The award includes an honorarium made possible by a grant from Westat.
Hidiroglou was selected by Denise Silva (chair), Jae-Kwang Kim, Kristen Olson, and Paul Smith, all appointed by Survey Methodology and the American Statistical Association.
Caucus for Women in Statistics and Data Science
Dong-Yun Kim and Jessica Kohlschmidt
The Caucus for Women in Statistics and Data Science honored Tae Rim Lee with the Societal Impact Award. Lee, a professor emerita at Korea National Open University, has held major leadership roles, including serving as president of several statistical and health information societies. She also served on various national and international committees, including the International Biometric Society and International Federation of Classification Societies.
Lee has been a strong advocate of e-learning, coordinating the e-ASEM Network from 2010 to 2020. She founded Women in Statistics in Korea in 2019 and has encouraged junior female statisticians to focus more on their own research. Although retired from her faculty position, Lee remains active, serving as vice president of the Korean Association of Senior Scientists and Engineers, promoting science and engineering through digital platforms. Her pioneering work continues to inspire and influence the younger generations in the statistics and education fields.
The Societal Impact Award was founded in 2021 by Wendy Lou of the University of Toronto. The award is given annually to a statistician or data scientist who has actively worked to advance social justice or diversity, equity, and inclusion through their research, teaching, or service.
Additionally, the Caucus for Women in Statistics and Data Science has been helping young career professionals and students travel to participate in the annual Joint Statistical Meetings since 2016. This year, they presented the Lee Travel Award to Jaihee Choi of Rice University and two Do Bui Travel awards to Kimberly Webb of Cornell University and Zihan Zhang of the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Noether Scholar Awards
ASA Fellow Peter Rousseeuw was honored with the 2024 Gottfried E. Noether Distinguished Scholar Award. Rousseeuw has made significant contributions to robust estimation, innovative model-free cluster analysis, and the development of statistical depth functions. His work—renowned for advancing methodology, creating algorithms, and having broad application—has significantly shaped the landscape of statistical analysis and had a profound impact on both theoretical and practical aspects of nonparametric statistics.
Rousseeuw is emeritus professor of the University of Leuven, Belgium. He gave a talk titled “Robustness and Distance Correlation” during the Noether Award session at JSM 2024.
The Gottfried E. Noether Early Career Scholar awards were presented to Edgar Dobriban of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and Lucas Janson of Harvard.
Leave a Reply