2021 SSC awards: Call for nominations
Nominations for the 2021 SSC awards must be received by these dates:
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Gold Medal—January 31, 2021
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Honorary Member—January 31, 2021
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Distinguished Service—January 31, 2021
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Impact of Applied and Collaborative Work—January 31, 2021
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Pierre Robillard—January 31, 2021
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CRM-SSC—February 1, 2021
Nominations for the following 2021 COPSS awards must be received by December 15, 2020:
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COPSS Distinguished Achievement Award and Lectureship
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Presidents' Award
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Florence N. David Award
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George W. Snedecor Award
When making a nomination, please consider the SSC's guidelines on implicit bias (pdf).
SSC GOLD MEDAL
The Gold Medal of the SSC is awarded to a person who has made outstanding contributions to statistics, or to probability, either to mathematical developments or in applied work. The Gold Medal is intended to honour current leaders in their fields and is normally expected to be awarded to someone still active in research. The recipient should be Canadian or a permanent resident of Canada, and must have made high quality research contributions to the statistical sciences in Canada. A recipient of the Gold Medal must be a member of the SSC. A nomination consists of a recent curriculum vitae, at least four letters of support, and a suggested citation to accompany the award. A nomination is effective for three successive competitions and may be updated annually. Previous winners can be viewed here.
SSC HONORARY MEMBERSHIP
Honorary Membership in the SSC is intended to honour a probabilist or a statistician or, in special circumstances, another individual who has made exceptional contributions to the development of the discipline. Nominations are open to people whose work was done primarily in Canada or who had a major impact in this country. Membership in the SSC is not a prerequisite. A nomination consists of a recent curriculum vitae, at least three letters of support, and a suggested citation to accompany the award. Previous winners can be viewed here.
SSC DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD
The Distinguished Service Award is intended to honour a person who has contributed substantially and over a period of several years to the operation or welfare of the SSC. A nomination consists of a recent curriculum vitae, at least two letters of support, and a suggested citation to accompany the award. Previous winners can be viewed here.
Nominations for the three SSC awards—the Gold Medal, Honorary Membership, and the Distinguished Service Award—must be received on or before January 31, 2021 by the chair of the SSC awards committee, Robert Platt. The submission process is not complete until the chair has confirmed receipt of the nomination.
Chair of the SSC Awards Committee
Robert Platt
AWARD FOR IMPACT OF APPLIED AND COLLABORATIVE WORK
The SSC Award for Impact of Applied and Collaborative Work is given to a Canadian or to someone residing in Canada, who is a member of the SSC and who has made outstanding contributions in applied and collaborative work, the importance of which derives primarily from its relatively recent impact on a subject area outside of the statistical sciences, on an area of application or on an organization.
The essential idea is that the award is for the impact of the work (not for its degree of technical sophistication, for example). The work should demonstrate the importance of the statistical sciences to other areas of endeavour and should include an intellectual contribution to statistical science motivated by the area of application. Areas in which a substantial contribution would qualify include: formulation of new statistical questions and ideas uniquely appropriate to the subject matter discipline or the organization; development and application of conceptually new approaches appropriate to the subject matter or the organization; new implementation of the best combination of techniques to solve important and difficult research problems in the applied discipline; development of statistical methods that answer a question in another field that could not have been answered adequately before; application of creative statistical thinking with demonstration of clear understanding of the science/industry of the area of endeavour; establishment of the relative merits of alternative analytic approaches leading to guidelines useful to applied scientists in choosing among them. This list is intended to be examples of contributions and is not necessarily exhaustive.
The nomination package should consist of a letter of nomination and at least three letters of support, a curriculum vitae, a “layperson” description of the work and its impact expressed in terms that would be suitable for publicity purposes, and a citation suitable for public announcement of the award. The nomination package should also include at least two letters from non-statisticians representing the field or organization that has felt the impact of the work. The letters must address how the contributions have had a recent impact. Letters of recommendation from those not directly involved in the research are particularly encouraged. The onus is on the nominator(s) to explain the work and to provide evidence of its impact in support of the nomination.
Previous award winners can be viewed here.
Nominations must be received on or before January 31, 2021 by the chair of the committee, Tolu Sajobi. Electronic submission with PDF files is preferred. The submission process is not complete until the chair has confirmed receipt of the nomination.
Tolu Sajobi
Department of Community Health Sciences
University of Calgary
PIERRE ROBILLARD AWARD
The aim of the Pierre Robillard Award is to recognize the best PhD thesis defended at a Canadian university in a given year and written in the fields covered by The Canadian Journal of Statistics. 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 2021 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.
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. 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.
If accepted, the paper will be identified as being based on the thesis which won the 2019 Pierre Robillard Award; the names of the university and the thesis supervisor will be clearly indicated. The thesis supervisor could be coauthor of the paper. The Pierre Robillard Award committee chair must receive the thesis and a nominating letter from the thesis supervisor by January 31, 2021.
It is imperative that the supervisors address the three criteria below in their letters:
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 coauthored articles.
2. Possible applications and their treatment.
3. Potential impact on the statistical sciences.
In so doing, the supervisor may include excerpts of letters from external examiners. Complete letters from external examiners or referees will not be accepted. Official confirmation that the thesis has been defended in 2019 must also be provided. Electronic submission is strongly encouraged.
Submission Instructions
For electronic submission, the thesis should be in PDF format. The thesis and covering letter can be emailed 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 and StudentName-cover-letter.pdf, where “StudentName” is replaced with the name of the student being nominated. Alternately, the covering letter can give a website from which an electronic copy of the thesis can be downloaded. 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 email addresses and phone numbers of both the supervisor and the student.
Previous award winners can be viewed here
Send thesis submissions for the Pierre Robillard Award to the chair of the Pierre Robillard Award committee, Yingwei Paul Peng. The submission process is not complete until the chair has confirmed receipt of the nomination.
Yingwei Paul Peng
Department of Public Health Sciences, Queen's University
yingwei.peng@queensu.ca
CRM-SSC AWARD
The Centre de recherches mathématiques (CRM) and the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC) solicit nominations for the CRM-SSC Prize, which is awarded in recognition of a statistical scientist's professional accomplishments in research during the first 15 years after earning a doctorate.
The award, which includes a $3,000 cash prize, is bestowed at most once a year upon a Canadian citizen or permanent resident of Canada whose research was carried out primarily in Canada. Previous award winners can be viewed here.
In 2021 eligibility will be limited to candidates who received their PhD (or equivalent degree) in the year 2006 or subsequently. The CRM-SSC Prize committee may exceptionally consider candidates who have received their degree prior but very near to the year 2006, if it can be demonstrated that special circumstances, such as parental leaves or other leaves of absence from work, delayed professional achievements. Current membership in the SSC is not a prerequisite. The nominations will be examined by an advisory committee consisting of five members, three of whom are appointed by the SSC and two by the CRM. The committee is chaired by one of the two CRM representatives.
Nominations should be addressed to the director of the Centre de recherches mathématiques, and sent via email to nomination@crm.umontreal.ca by February 1, 2021. The nomination should be accompanied by at least three and no more than four letters of support, an up-to-date curriculum vitae, including a list of publications, and a suggested citation to accompany the award. As files are not carried over from one year to the next, nominations must be renewed each year.
Please submit nomination files by email to the attention of the director of the CRM at nomination@crm.umontreal.ca. The submission process is not complete until the chair has confirmed receipt of the nomination.
COPSS AWARDS
The Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS) sponsors a number of awards which are presented at the Joint Statistical Meetings. These awards are: the Presidents’ Award (“to a young member of the statistical community in recognition of outstanding contributions to the profession of statistics”), the COPSS Distinguished Achievement Award and Lectureship (“to honour the work of a present-day statistician”), the Elizabeth L. Scott Award (“to recognize an individual who exemplifies the contributions of Elizabeth L. Scott’s lifelong efforts to further the careers of women in academia”), the Florence N. David Award (“to recognize a female statistician who exemplifies the contributions of Florence Nightingale David”), and the George W. Snedecor Award (“to honour an individual who was instrumental in the development of statistical theory in biometry”). Note that the David and Snedecor Awards are given only in odd-numbered years, whereas the Scott Award is given only in even-numbered years. Also note that, for the COPSS Presidents’ Award, “eligible candidates either (i) will be under 41 throughout the award calendar year, or (ii) will be under age 46 throughout the award calendar year and will have received a terminal statistically-related degree no more than 12 years prior to that year.”
Members of the SSC are encouraged to nominate worthy candidates for these COPSS awards. The deadline for nominations for the Distinguished Achievement Award and Lectureship, Florence N. David Award, George W. Snedecor Award, and the Presidents' Award is December 15, 2020.
For information concerning the nomination process and a list of previous winners, see here. For further information or assistance, contact Robert Platt, robert.platt@mcgill.ca.