Berkeleyan

Awards

29 September 2005

Nicholas Jewell, Mark van der Laan

Biostatistics professors from Berkeley were presented with two of the top statistics awards at the 2005 Joint Statistical Meeting of the American Statistical Association, held in Minneapolis in August. Mark van der Laan, professor of biostatistics, and Nicholas Jewell, professor of biostatistics and statistics, each received honors for outstanding achievements in the field.

The Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies presented van der Laan with the 2005 Presidents' Award, given annually to a young member of the statistics community in recognition of extraordinary merit. The Committee of Presidents, which represents four of the major international statistical organizations, recognized van der Laan's work in several areas of theoretical and applied statistics, including causal inference in longitudinal studies and computational biology. Recipients must be age 40 or younger to be eligible for the award.

Jewell received the prestigious 2005 George W. Snedecor Award for an outstanding publication in biometry. The award recognizes an individual who has been instrumental in the development of statistical theory in biometry. Jewell was honored for his paper, "Case-control current status data," which appeared in a 2004 issue of the journal Biometrika.

Ignacio Chapela, Tyrone Hayes

The Jenifer Altman Awards, created by the Upstream Fund (a donor-advised fund of the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors), are given this year in recognition of the recipients' "dedication to scientific integrity in environmental-health sciences and the pursuit of science in the public interest." This year's five winners include two Berkeley faculty. Tyrone Hayes, professor of integrative biology, is honored for his research showing that exposure to extremely low levels of atrazine has devastating health effects on frogs. Ignacio Chapela, associate professor of microbial ecology, is honored for his research into the effects of genetically modified corn on native strains of Mexican maize. Each winner receives a $5,000 award.

Breastfeeding Support Program

The campus Breastfeeding Support Program, coordinated by Health*Matters, was named the winner of the Mother-Baby Friendly Workplace Award 2005 by the Bay Area Lactation Associates (BALA) and the Alameda County Breastfeeding Task Force in August. The Health*Matters program was cited for providing exemplary conditions for mothers wishing to breastfeed their babies after they return to work. The Breastfeeding Support Program provides Berkeley faculty, staff, and students with personal breast pumps for sale at cost, lactation rooms on campus, and free breastfeeding/return-to-work classes offered four times a year. For information, visit uhs.berkeley.edu/facstaff/healthmatters/breastfeeding.shtml or call 643-4646.