Jerome Sacks

Annual Award Honors Outstanding Cross-Disciplinary Research

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. The annual prize of $1,000, presented at the NISS JSM Reception, recognizes sustained, high-quality cross-disciplinary research involving the statistical sciences.

The inaugural award was presented to Professor Elizabeth Thompson of the University of Washington at the NISS reception at JSM 2001 in Atlanta, for her "sustained, high-quality cross-disciplinary research bridging the statistical sciences and genetics." Max Morris of Iowa State University received the 2002 Award, recognizing "outstanding cross-disciplinary contributions to the statistical sciences, engineering, health physics, geology and toxicology." The 2003 award was presented to Raymond Carroll of Texas A & M University for his "outstanding cross-disciplinary contributions to the statistical sciences, epidemiology, public health, nutrition, molecular cell biology and environmental toxicology." In 2004, Douglas Nychka of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) received the award for his "outstanding contributions to the statistical sciences, both theory and practice, atmospheric science, climatology, environmetrics and the geosciences."

 C.F. Jeff Wu of the Georgia Institute of Technology was presented the award in 2005 for "outstanding statistical contributions to the design of experiments and quality improvement, and for bringing sound statistical ideas and applications to the engineering sciences." In 2006, Adrian Raftery of the University of Washington received the Sacks Award for "outstanding contributions at the interface of the statistical sciences and the social, environmental and health sciences, as well as methodological research on Bayesian model selection and averaging."

Cliff Spiegelman, from Texas A&M, was awarded the 2007 Sacks Award "for outstanding cross-disciplinary contributions to the statistical sciences, chemometrics, forensics, transportation and environmetrics". At JSM 2008 in Denver, CO, the 2008 Sacks Award was presented to John Rice from the University of California at Berkeley "for outstanding, diverse cross-disciplinary contributions to ion channel receptors, energy demand, transportation, astronomy and functional data analysis".