2008 Jerome Sacks Award for Cross-Disciplinary Research Presented to John Rice

Research Triangle Park, NC, USA (SANEPR.com) August 11, 2008 -- Jim Landwehr, chairman of the Board of Trustees for The National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS) announces that John Rice, Professor and Chair of the Department of Statistics at the University of California Berkeley, is the recipient of the 2008 Jerome Sacks Award for Cross-Disciplinary Research. The award was presented to Rice at a NISS reception held August 4 at the Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) in Denver, Colorado.

Rice was recognized for his outstanding, diverse cross-disciplinary contributions to ion channel receptors, energy demand, transportation, astronomy and functional data analysis. Among Rice’s many achievements is the highly regarded book, Mathematical Statistics and Data Analysis (2nd edition, 2006).

The NISS Board of Trustees established the Jerome Sacks Award for Cross-Disciplinary Research in 2000 to honor Sacks’ service as the founding director of NISS, a capacity in which he served from 1991-2000. The annual prize of $1,000 recognizes sustained, high-quality cross-disciplinary research involving the statistical sciences that exemplifies the NISS mission to identify, catalyze and foster high-impact, cross-disciplinary research involving the statistical sciences. The recipient’s name is also added to a plaque that is housed at NISS.

“I am very surprised and honored to receive this award. Jerry Sacks is a pioneer in cross-disciplinary research, and I think that it is wonderful that NISS has an award named for him. Interestingly, my work in transportation, which deals with measuring traffic flow on freeways, began with my involvement in the NISS transportation project in the 1990s. Thanks to NISS for the award and to all of you for being here at this ceremony,” remarks Rice.

Previous winners of the award include:
Elizabeth Thompson of the University of Washington – 2001
Max Morris of Iowa State University – 2002
Raymond Carroll of Texas A & M University – 2003
Douglas Nychka of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) – 2004
Jeff Wu of the Georgia Institute of Technology – 2005
Adrian Raftery of the University of Washington – 2006
Cliff Spiegelman, from Texas A&M – 2007

About NISS
The National Institute of Statistical Sciences was established in 1990 by the national statistics societies and the Research Triangle universities and organizations, with the mission to identify, catalyze and foster high-impact, cross-disciplinary research involving the statistical sciences. The mission of NISS is to perform and stimulate cross-disciplinary and cross-sector research involving statistics; confront complex, data-driven scientific problems of national importance; and provide career development opportunities for statisticians and scientists, especially those in the formative stages of their careers.
For more information about NISS, please visit the website at: www.niss.org.