The 2026 Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences has been awarded to both Emmanuel Candès and Camillo De Lellis for their breakthrough contributions in mathematics. The award annually honors outstanding achievements in astronomy, computer science, life science and medicine, and mathematical sciences.
Stanford University
Grace Wahba
While working full time and raising a child, Grace Wahba earned advanced degrees, completing her PhD at Stanford. She pioneered smoothing splines, shaping modern nonparametric regression and leaving a lasting imprint on data analysis and machine learning.
Obituary: Stephen Portnoy
Longtime ASA member and Fellow Stephen Portnoy passed away December 28, 2025.
Grace Wahba
In 2025 Grace Wahba was awarded the International Prize in Statistics in recognition of her groundbreaking work on smoothing splines, which has transformed modern data analysis and machine learning.
Christophe Toukam Tchakoute
Christophe Toukam Tchakoute grew up in Cameroon during the peak of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which is how he became interested in STEM. His interest was reinforced when he attended the University of Cape Town in South Africa and became curious about the chemistry and cell biology of HIV and how the virus can hijack the immune system for its own benefit. Consequently, he interned in the HIV/AIDS department at the World Health Organization and was introduced to epidemiology and biostatistics. He now works at Genentech and leverages statistics and real-world data to inform clinical trial design for different oncology programs.
Nancy Reid to Deliver 2022 COPSS Distinguished Lecture
Nancy Reid, a professor in the department of statistical sciences at the University of Toronto who has contributed fundamental and path-breaking work in a wide range of statistical problems, will give her lecture at the 2022 Joint Statistical Meetings in Washington, DC. Her talk is titled “Likelihood and Its Discontents.”
Obituary: S. James (Jim) Press
ASA member S. James (Jim) Press passed away in November 2020.
Daniela Witten
Daniela Witten is the recipient of a number of honors, including an NIH Director’s Early Independence Award and the Gertrude Cox Scholarship. She is committed to translating key concepts in statistical machine learning to a broad scientific audience and is also a co-author of the extremely popular textbook, Introduction to Statistical Learning.