NISS has three awards given each year, the Jerome Sacks Award recognizing sustained, high-quality cross-disciplinary research involving the statistical sciences, the Distinguished Service Award to recognize individuals who have given extraordinary service that significantly advances NISS and its mission, and the NISS Distinguished Alumni Award which recognizes former NISS postdocs or research associates who have gone on to have distinguished careers. Learn more by following the links below:
- Jerome Sacks Award for Outstanding Cross-Disciplinary Research
- Distinguished Service Award
- NISS Distinguished Alumni Award
NISS Distinguished Alumni Award
The NISS Distinguished Alumni Award is intended for former NISS postdocs or research associates who have had distinguished careers. Examples might include academics who have been promoted to full professor, and individuals who have had successful careers in business, or as leaders in industry or government. Only former NISS postdocs or research associates who left NISS more than 10 years prior to the awarding year are eligible for the award.
2024 Awardee
Adrian Dobra | Honoring his excellent work in Bayesian statistics and multivariate spatiotemporal models, resulting in advancements in public health, demography, and computational social science applied to disease risk assessment.
Jerome Sacks Award for Outstanding Cross-Disciplinary Research
The NISS Board of Trustees established the Jerome Sacks Award for Cross-Disciplinary Research in 2000 to honor Jerry Sacks' service as the founding director of NISS. The annual prize of $1,000, presented at the NISS JSM Reception, recognizes sustained, high-quality cross-disciplinary research involving the statistical sciences.
Sudipto Banerjee, PhD, was named the 2024 Sacks Award winner. Dr. Banerjee is a Professor at the University of California Los Angeles in the Department of Biostatistics and the Department of Statistics & Data Science, is an Affiliate Professor in the UCLA Institute of the Environment & Sustainability, as well as a Senior Associate Dean for Academic Programs UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. "For his sustained, high-quality, cross-disciplinary research involving the statistical and data science fields, producing pioneering efforts bridging Bayesian statistics and spatial observations to advance environmental statistics, and groundbreaking procedures resulting in considerable impact spanning statistical methodology, innovative computation, and applied science."
NISS Distinguished Service Award
The NISS Distinguished Service Awards were established by the Board of Trustees in 2005 to recognize individuals who have given extraordinary service that significantly advances NISS and its mission. Each year, one or more recipients are chosen by a committee composed of the Vice-Chair of the Board, the chair of the Awards Committee of the Board and the Director. Each receives a memento and has his or her name added to a plaque in the NISS office.
Citation for the 2024 Winners
NANCY A. POTOK | Dr. Potok was honored for her excellent leadership prior to and during her recent six years of service to the NISS Board, the Affiliates Committee and the profession. For developing and promoting outreach programs for NISS affiliates, and for co-organizing workshops, forums, and webinars, including the NISS-FCSM AI in Federal Government Series and the CNSTAT-FCSM-NISS AI Day for Federal Statistics.
PIAOMU LIU | Dr. Liu was honored for her exceptional leadership and service to NISS and the profession, for developing and promoting outreach programs for the NISS Affiliates Committee, for helping found the NISS Graduate Student Network (GSN) and chairing the GSN steering committee, for co-organizing GSN conferences and events, for chairing the NISS Writing Workshop organizing committee, and for helping found the NISS New Researchers Network.