New Zealand Statistical Association Newsletter 66
September 2007
Edward Kitson Medal - Xiaogu Zheng
Fellowship of RSNZ - Chris Wild
McMeekan Memorial Award - Ken Dodds
McDiarmid Young Scientist Runner Up - James Russell
NZSA Campbell Award Criteria
Edward Kidson Medal - Xiaogu Zheng
Congratulations
to Dr Xiaogu Zheng of NIWA who has been awarded the Edward Kidson Medal
for outstanding contributions to meteorological research by the Meteorological
Society of New Zealand. The Medal was presented at the RSNZ awards dinner
in December.
Dr Zheng obtained his PhD in Statistics at the Department of Mathematics, Beijing Normal University in 1985. From 1987 to 1990 he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Statistics and Operations Research, Victoria University, supervised by David Vere-Jones and Peter Thomson, before joining the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in Wellington as a Climate Statistician.
Citation: It is with great pleasure that the Meteorological Society
of New Zealand has chosen to award its third Kidson Medal to Dr Xiaogu
Zheng of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research. The
Society considers Dr Zheng’s work in studying patterns for seasonal
forecasting of rainfall in New Zealand to be outstanding in regards to
the advancement in science that this work provides. In terms of advancing
knowledge and capability on climate forecasting, Dr Zheng’s work
will soon be relevant not only to New Zealand but to most regions in the
Southern Hemisphere. It has provided remarkable mathematical rigour to
the complex world of integrating different components of the climate system.
Fellowship of RSNZ - Chris Wild
Chris
Wild, Professor of Statistics at the University of Auckland, has earned
a very high international reputation for his work in several areas of
statistics, and the important contribution that he has made to research
in other disciplines.
One strand of his work is concerned with developing methodology for the design and analysis of medical studies. The methods in his landmark paper “Fitting prospective models to case-control data” (the lead paper in the 1991 issue of Biometrika) have been further developed to enable researchers to use a whole range of new study designs. His current work draws on his combined expertise in response-based sampling and in frailty modeling, to produce efficient methods for handling data from retrospective family studies that are used widely in genetic epidemiology. A second strand is his work on nonstandard regression methodology, a subject on which his encyclopaedic book "Nonlinear Regression" with George Seber is the authoritative reference. A third strand of his work with broad international recognition is his research into the philosophy of statistics and modes of statistical thinking.
The respect that he commands worldwide is illustrated by his being invited
as Opening Plenary Speaker at the 2004 conference of the Royal Statistical
Society, and the ten invited addresses he has given at meetings of the
International Statistical Institute and the American Statistical Association.
McMeekan Memorial Award - Ken Dodds
The
New Zealand Society of Animal Production (NZSAP) recently presented two
of its top awards to AgResearch Invermay staff members, David Stevens
and Ken Dodds.
Ken, a statistician with the AgResearch Bioinformatics, Mathematics & Statistics Section, won the society's McMeekan Memorial Award that recognises outstanding individual contribution to New Zealand animal production during the previous five years. He was nominated for almost single-handedly providing analytical and statistical leadership and support to the gene discovery programmes run at AgResearch Invermay that have led onto world-leading industry applications of marker-assisted selection in sheep during the past 20 years.
His major achievement during the past five years was
his contribution to the development of the fractional-parentage DNA pedigree
system that forms the basis of the Catapult Shepherd product. The fractional-parentage
system uses DNA marker information to calculate the pedigree of animals
in a breeding programme so that the most accurate breeding values possible
can be estimated.
McDiarmid Young Scientist Runner Up - James Russell
Congratulations
to James Russell (University of Auckland), runner up for the 2007 McDiarmid
Young Scientist for his project 'Invasion Ecology of Rats on New Zealand
Islands'. James was also first in the Understanding Planet Earth category.
The MacDiarmid Young Scientists of the Year Awards are presented by the
Foundation of Research, Science and Technology and are designed to recognise
excellent research, science and technology while also promoting the importance
of good science communication.
This
award was initiated in 1999 to promote statistics within NZ and to recognise
an individual’s contribution to the promotion and development of statistics.
The first recipient was Stan Roberts. Stan will be remembered most recently
for his efforts in the NZ statistics history project. The award was given
to him at the conference in Wellington in 1999. The second recipient was
Murray Jorgenson and the award was given to him at the conference in Christchurch
in 2001. Then Harold Henderson received the third award in 2003, and
Jeff Hunter the fourth award in 2006..
The criteria for the award are:
-
publishing the best, recent, original statistical research undertaken within NZ, or,
-
making an outstanding contribution to statistical education, or,
-
playing a key role in consulting on a major, innovative research project that has direct relevance to NZ, or,
-
making a significant contribution to promoting statistics within NZ.
One point worth noting is that the award may only be given to fully paid up members of the NZSA. All membership categories are eligible. This could be a way of encouraging new members - promise new members that they may one day be given an award!
Please send your nominations to Jennifer Brown (J.Brown@math.canterbury.ac.nz) or Harold Henderson (Harold.Henderson@agresearch.co.nz)
Jennifer Brown