The winner of the 2003 Robillard Prize was announced at the annual meeting of the SSC at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The winner was Grace Chiu, for the thesis “Bent-Cable Regression for Assessing Abruptness of Change”. The thesis was written at Simon Fraser University under the direction of Professor Richard Lockhart and Professor Richard Routledge. The prize consists of a certificate, a cheque for $400, a one-year subscription to the Canadian Journal of Statistics, and an invitation to submit a paper based on the thesis to that journal. Grace delivered an invited lecture based on the thesis at the meeting.

Dr. Chiu received both her Bachelor’s and Masters degrees from UBC, in 1994 and 1996. She completed her Ph.D. in Statistics at Simon Fraser University in 2002. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow with the Pacific Institute for Mathematical Sciences and a visiting scholar at the University of Washington’s Department of Statistics.

Dr. Chiu’s thesis concerns the bent-cable model, consisting of two straight lines joined smoothly by a quadratic bend in the middle. The problem is well motivated by applications from Biology, Physiology and Physics. Inferential methods are developed for both the location of the transition and its abruptness. The asymptotic theory for these techniques was nonstandard and very demanding. At the same time, Dr. Chiu paid close attention to the practical issues such as requirements for data collection, and computational issues.

The prize winner was selected by a committee consisting of Professors David Bellhouse (University of Western Ontario), Hugh Chipman (University of Waterloo), Gerarda Darlington (University of Guelph) and Jonathan Taylor (Stanford University). This year there were eleven theses submitted. The committee was impressed by the high quality of the submissions on a wide diversity of topics.

Hugh Chipman, University of Waterloo, Chair of the Pierre Robillard Committee