Five Columbia Faculty Receive Top Honor in Statistics

They have been chosen to deliver Institute of Mathematical Statistics Medallion Awards and Lectures.

September 26, 2024

Four faculty from the department of statistics and one professor of biostatistics at the Mailman School of Public Health have been chosen to deliver an Institute of Mathematical Statistics Medallion Lecture, a high honor in the field.

The Columbia Statistics faculty chosen to deliver lectures are Genevera Allen, David Blei, Marcel Nutz, and Bodhisattva Sen. Ian McKeague, a professor of biostatistics, at Mailman School of Public Health, was also selected.

Eight people are invited to deliver Medallion Awards and Lectures annually. The Medallion nomination is an honor and an acknowledgment of a significant research contribution to one or more areas of research. Each Medallion Awardee and Lecturer receives a medallion in a brief ceremony preceding the lecture. The Columbia faculty receiving the honor will deliver their lectures in the summer of 2026.

"This prestigious recognition of our esteemed member, Ian McKeague, is a testament to his outstanding contributions to our field. Ian is a leading example of the eminent status of our department in developing cutting edge methods with mathematical rigor to advance transdisciplinary science in several areas of public health – with balanced attention to new areas such as artificial intelligence and established excellence in theoretical foundations of biostatistics," said Kiros Berhane, Chair of Biostatistics at the Mailman School of Public Health.

"The fact that four of the eight people chosen to deliver these lectures is a member of the Columbia Statistics faculty is a strong testament to our department," said Tian Zheng, chair of the department of statistics. "We have an exceptional breadth of research within one department, from probability to artificial intelligence, and are working on various frontiers of the field, from biology, to neural science, to political science, to psychometrics, to climate change."