The WNAR of IBS Outstanding Impact Award and Lectureship was established in 2021 to recognize an outstanding individual or team, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality or citizenship, who has made a significant impact on our society through service and/or research in the development and application of statistical, mathematical, and data science theory and methods in the biomedical or environmental sciences. A significant impact can comprise either a single contribution of extraordinary merit or an outstanding aggregate of contributions that significantly impacts to biosciences and environmental sciences.

Call and information for IBS/WNAR Outstanding Impact Award and Lectureship here.

Deadline for nominations: November 1, 2024

Nomination forms: 

Please use this nomination form (.docx version here) and this short CV template (.docx version here) to submit nominations through this link.

Questions: Send your questions to the Award Committee via email: awards@wnar.org

Previous Award Recipients

2024: Rob Tibshirani, Stanford University

Dr. Robert J. Tibshirani is Professor of Biomedical Data Science and Statistics at Stanford University. Dr. Tibshirani’s nomination package clearly demonstrated his highly impactful research contributions to the fields of biometrics and science at large. The LASSO, his most renowned contribution, has ignited an entirely new realm of research and applications from genomics to finance, and is a cornerstone of the modern data science. Dr. Tibshirani will gave a talk in the WNAR Outstanding Impact Award Lecture at the 2024 JSM on Monday, August 5, 2024, 2pm entitled "Cooperative learning and cooperative components analysis".

2023: Steve Horvath, Altos Labs, UC Los Angeles

Dr. Steve Horvath is a Principal Investigator at the Altos Labs San Diego Institute of Science. Prior to joining Altos, he was a Professor of Human Genetics and Biostatistics at UCLA. Dr. Horvath’s nomination package clearly demonstrated his highly impactful research contributions to the fields of bioinformatics and aging biology, especially for his development of the widely used weighted correlation network analysis (WGCNA) method for studying biological networks and for his revolutionary development of the highly accurate and widely used epigenetic clocks, also known as Horvath’s clocks, for age estimation based on DNA methylation data. Dr. Horvath gave a talk in the WNAR Outstanding Impact Award Lecture at the 2023 JSM on Tuesday, August 8, 2023, 2pm entitled "Epigenetic Clocks and Weighted Correlation Network Analysis."

2022: Bin Yu, UC Berkeley [inaugural recipient]

Dr. Bin Yu is the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor and Class of 1936 Second Chair in the Departments of Statistics and Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley. Dr Yu’s nomination package clearly demonstrated her fundamental contributions in both statistical theory and practice, which has lasting impacts across the fields of statistics and interdisciplinary domains; her high visible role model, especially for women researchers in multiple disciplines; and her outstanding leadership in professional and community services that positively influenced advancement in and recognition of Biometrics. Dr. Yu gave a talk in the WNAR Outstanding Impact Award Lecture at the 2022 JSM on Monday, August 8, 2022, 10:30am entitled "Principles for Impactful Data Science and Statistics: Lessons Learned from Covid-19 Forecasting and Beyond."