The Pierre Robillard Award Committee Chair must receive the thesis, a nominating letter from the thesis supervisor and the external examiner’s report by January 31, for a thesis defended in the previous calendar year.

Submitted theses will be evaluated by a committee whose members are appointed by the President of the SSC; their decision will be final. Judging will take into account the originality of the ideas and techniques, the possible applications and their treatment, and the potential impact on the statistical sciences. It should be stressed that only the thesis is being evaluated; the other research contributions of the candidate are not taken into account. In any given year, no more than one winner will be selected; however, the committee may arrive at the conclusion that none of the submitted theses merits the award.

The award consists of a certificate, a monetary prize, and a one-year membership in the SSC. The winner will be invited to give a talk based on the thesis at the Annual Meeting of the Society; assistance with expenses to attend the meeting may be provided. The winner will also be invited to submit a paper to The Canadian Journal of Statistics. If accepted, the paper will be identified as being based on the thesis which won the Pierre Robillard Award in the year the thesis was defended; the names of the university and the thesis supervisor will be clearly indicated. The thesis supervisor could be co-author of the paper.

 It is imperative that the supervisors address the three criteria below in their letter:

1.  The originality of the ideas and techniques, as well as a description of the exact contribution of the student when the thesis is based on co-authored articles,
2.  Possible applications and their treatment,
3.  Potential impact on the statistical sciences.

The external examiner’s report is required in the nomination package unless the university treats it as confidential in which case a letter explaining the situation should replace it. Formal citations of the published thesis work (if applicable) should be provided. Excerpts from referee reports of articles appearing in the thesis can also be included in the supervisor’s letter. Official confirmation that the thesis has been defended in the calendar year prior to the nomination deadline must also be provided. Electronic submission is strongly encouraged.

The SSC values and encourages Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in all of its nominations and awards. Please see the SSC guidelines on implicit bias (pdf). 

Submission Instructions

For electronic submission, the thesis should be in Postscript, Adobe Acrobat (.pdf), or Microsoft Word format. The thesis, covering letter and external examiner’s report can be e-mailed to the committee chair. The subject header of the electronic message should be “SSC Robillard Award Submission - StudentName” and the corresponding files should be named StudentName-thesis.pdf (or StudentName-thesis.doc, etc), StudentNamecover-letter.pdf (or StudentName-cover-letter.doc, etc), and StudentName-examiner-report.pdf (or StudentName-examiner-report.doc, etc), where “StudentName” is replaced with the name of the student being nominated. Alternately, the covering letter can give a web site from which an electronic copy of the thesis can be downloaded.

Official confirmation that the thesis has been defended in the calendar year prior to the nomination deadline must also be provided.

If the thesis has to be submitted in another electronic format or on paper, the Pierre Robillard Award Committee Chair must be contacted before submission. Entries should include e-mail addresses and phone numbers of both the supervisor and the student.