Announcement

Leonard J. Savage Dissertation Awards

International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA) is pleased to announce two L. S. Savage Awards of $750 each for 2001:

* Theory and Methods Savage Award for a dissertation that makes important original contributions to the foundations, theoretical developments, and/or general methodology of Bayesian analysis.

* Applied Methodology Savage Award for a dissertation that makes outstanding contributions with novel Bayesian analysis of a substantive problem that has potential to impact statistical practice in a field of application.

The Savage Awards are cosponsored by the American Statistical Association Section on Bayesian Statistical Science, Trustees of the L. J. Savage Memorial Fund, and NBER/NSF Seminars on Bayesian Inference in Econometrics.

A dissertation may be nominated by the author, by the advisor or other reader, by the department chair or professor, or by any ISBA member. A dissertation may be nominated for only one year's awards. Nomination is made by submission of the dissertation and a letter that describes the main theoretical, methodological, and/or applied contributions of the thesis and specifies the award it is for (Theory and Methods or Applied Methodology). Nomination letter and thesis should be sent as e-mail attachments to Ehsan S. Soofi, esoofi@uwm.edu. Please use the following formats: "nominatorname_candidatename.ps" (or pdf) for nomination letter; "candidatename_t.ps" (or pdf) for Theory Methods Award; "candidatename_a.ps" (or pdf) for Application Methodology Award. Hard copy submission may be accepted only under exceptional circumstances by sending two hard copies of the dissertation to Ehsan S. Soofi, School of Business Administration, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, P.O. Box 742, Milwaukee, WI 53201, USA; for special mail carriers use 3202 N. Maryland Avenue, Milwaukee, WI 53211, USA.

Nominations for the 2001 Savage Awards must be received by December 31, 2001.

The theses will be evaluated by an evaluation committee. Winners will be announced August 2002 at the Bayesian reception of the Joint Statistical Meeting, New York, USA.

The winners of 2000 Theory and Methods Savage Award are Peter Hoff (supervisor Mike Newton, U. of Wisconsin-Madison) and Tzee-Ming Huang (supervisor Larry Wasserman, Carnegie Mellon) and the winner of 2000 Applied Methodology Savage Award is Jeremy Oakley (supervisor Tony O'Hagan, U. of Sheffield). The winner of an "honorable mention" ($100) for Applied Methodology is Tim Hanson (supervisor Wesley Johnson, U. of California, Davis). Drs. Huang, Oakley, and Hanson summarized their dissertations at the Savage Award Session of the 2001 Joint Statistical Meeting, Atlanta, USA, August 2001. Members of the 1999 Savage Thesis Evaluation Committee were: Siddhartha Chib (Chair), Washington University, St. Louis, Susie Bayarri, University of Valencia, Brad Carlin, University of Minnesota; Mike Evans, University of Toronto, Dave Higdon, Duke University, and Steve MacEachern, Ohio State University.