News of members

Canada’s Chief Statistician Dr. Ivan P. Fellegi has been awarded the Out-standing Achievement Award of the Public Service of Canada, the highest honour in the Public Service of Canada. As the citation reads, “Throughout his 45 year career, Dr. Fellegi has transformed Statistics Canada from a simple data collection agency to an organisation that sheds light on Canada’s most pressing current social issues”. The Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson, Governor General of Canada, and the Honourable John Manley, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, presented the award to Dr. Fellegi in a special ceremony.

Dr. Ganapati P. Patil is the recipient of the prestigious William Boggess Best Paper Award of the American Water Resources Association. The award will be presented at the Annual Award Function of the Association. A statistician is receiving the award for the first time in the thirty year history of the award. Dr. Patil has been selected to receive the 2002 award for his paper on predictability of surface water pollution loading using watershed-based landscape measurements published in the August 2001 Issue of the Journal of the American Water Resources Association.

The research was conducted under the auspices of the NSF and EPA Water and Watersheds Program and EPA Environmental Information Analysis and Access Program. It was a collaborative project of the Penn State Center for Statistical Ecology and Environmental Statistics and the Penn State Center for Remote Sensing of Earth Resources. The involved graduate research assistant did his MS in Environmental Statistics and Ph.D. in Statistical Ecology with Professor Patil. The research paper uses relevant parts of the multiscale advanced raster map analysis system in progress.

Dr. Patil is Distinguished Professor of Mathematical and Environmental Statistics, Director of the Center for Statistical Ecology and Environmental Statistics, and Editor-in-Chief of Environmental and Ecological Statistics at the Department of Statistics of the Pennsylvania State University. He has been a long time elected member of the International Statistical Institute and the vice-chair of its Committee on Environmental Statistics.

ISI member Professor Philippe Pilibossian has retired from his post as STMA regional editor. Professor Pilibossian has been covering the France and Switzerland regions on behalf of STMA since 1974. He started his duties when Jan Vos was General Editor of STMA. Gérard Bieau has recently been announced as his successor.