Geostatistics is a branch of statistics focusing on spatial or spatiotemporal datasets. Developed originally to predict probability distributions of ore grades for mining operations, it is currently applied in diverse disciplines including petroleum geology, hydrogeology, hydrology, meteorology, oceanography, geochemistry, geometallurgy, geography, forestry, environmental control, landscape ecology, soil science, and agriculture. Geostatistics is applied in varied branches of geography, particularly those involving the spread of diseases (epidemiology), the practice of commerce and military planning (logistics), and the development of efficient spatial networks. Geostatistical algorithms are incorporated in many places, including geographic information systems (GIS).
Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao was an Indian-American mathematician and statistician. He was professor emeritus at Pennsylvania State University and research professor at the University at Buffalo. Rao was honoured by numerous colloquia, honorary degrees, and festschrifts and was awarded the US National Medal of Science in 2002. The American Statistical Association has described him as "a living legend" whose work has influenced not just statistics, but has had far reaching implications for fields as varied as economics, genetics, anthropology, geology, national planning, demography, biometry, and medicine." The Times of India listed Rao as one of the top 10 Indian scientists of all time.
Stephen Elliott Fienberg was a professor emeritus in the Department of Statistics, the Machine Learning Department, Heinz College, and Cylab at Carnegie Mellon University. Fienberg was the founding co-editor of the Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application and of the Journal of Privacy and Confidentiality.
Arnold Zellner was an American economist and statistician specializing in the fields of Bayesian probability and econometrics. Zellner contributed pioneering work in the field of Bayesian analysis and econometric modeling.
Sylvia Therese Richardson is a French/British Bayesian statistician and is currently Professor of Biostatistics and Director of the MRC Biostatistics Unit at the University of Cambridge. In 2021 she became the president of the Royal Statistical Society for the 2021–22 year.
Anil K. Bera is an Indian-American econometrician. He is Professor of Economics at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign's Department of Economics. He is most noted for his work with Carlos Jarque on the Jarque–Bera test.
Christian Genest is a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at McGill University, where he holds a Canada Research Chair. He is the author of numerous research papers in multivariate analysis, nonparametric statistics, extreme-value theory, and multiple-criteria decision analysis.
Sudipto Banerjee is an Indian-American statistician best known for his work on Bayesian hierarchical modeling and inference for spatial data analysis. He is Professor of Biostatistics and Senior Associate Dean in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles. He served as the Chair of the Department of Biostatistics at UCLA from 2014 through 2023. He served as the elected President of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis in 2022.
Noel Andrew Cressie is an Australian and American statistician. He is Distinguished Professor and Director, Centre for Environmental Informatics, at the University of Wollongong in Wollongong, Australia.
Alan Enoch Gelfand is an American statistician, and is currently the James B. Duke Professor of Statistics and Decision Sciences at Duke University. Gelfand’s research includes substantial contributions to the fields of Bayesian statistics, spatial statistics and hierarchical modeling.
Marina Vannucci is an Italian statistician, the Noah Harding Professor and Chair of Statistics at Rice University, the past president of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis, and the former editor-in-chief of Bayesian Analysis. Topics in her research include wavelets, feature selection, and cluster analysis in Bayesian statistics.
Amy Helen Herring is an American biostatistician interested in longitudinal data and reproductive health. Formerly the Carol Remmer Angle Distinguished Professor of Children's Environmental Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she is now Sara & Charles Ayres Distinguished Professor in the Department of Statistical Science, Global Health Institute, and Department of Biostatistics & Bioinformatics of Duke University.
Dipak Kumar Dey is an Indian-American statistician best known for his work on Bayesian methodologies. He is currently the Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Connecticut. Dey has an international reputation as a statistician as well as a data scientist. Since he earned a Ph.D. degree in statistics from Purdue University in 1980, Dey has made tremendous contributions to the development of modern statistics, especially in Bayesian analysis, decision science and model selection. Dey has published more than 10 books and edited volumes, and over 260 research articles in peer-refereed national and international journals. In addition, the statistical methodologies that he has developed has found wide applications in a plethora of interdisciplinary and applied fields, such as biometry and bioinformatics, genetics, econometrics, environmental science, and social science. Dey has supervised 40 Ph.D. students, and presented more than 200 professional talks in colloquia, seminars and conferences all over the world. During his career, Dey has been a visiting professor or scholar at many institutions or research centers around the world, such as Macquarie University, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile,, University of São Paulo, University of British Columbia, Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute, etc. Dey is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, the International Society for Bayesian Analysis and the International Statistical Institute.
Bhramar Mukherjee is an Indian-American biostatistician, data scientist, professor and researcher. She has been appointed as the inaugural Senior Associate Dean of Public Health Data Science and Data Equity at the Yale School of Public Health starting August 1, 2024. She currently works as the John D. Kalbfleisch Distinguished University Professor of Biostatistics, Siobán D. Harlow Collegiate Professor of Public Health and the Chair of Department of Biostatistics, a professor of epidemiology and global public health at the University of Michigan. She serves as the associate director for Quantitative Data Sciences at University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center. In 2023 Mukherjee was also appointed as the inaugural Assistant Vice President of Research: Research Data Strategy at the University of Michigan Office of Vice President of Research. Mukherjee holds a Senior Honorary Visiting Fellow position at the Biostatistics Unit of the Medical Research Council, working on the theme of population health at the University of Cambridge, UK. Mukherjee is also appointed as an overseas fellow at Churchill College, University of Cambridge. She has served as the past Chair for Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS) for a three-year term 2019-2021.
Siddhartha Chib is an econometrician and statistician, the Harry C. Hartkopf Professor of Econometrics and Statistics at Washington University in St. Louis. His work is primarily in Bayesian statistics, econometrics, and Markov chain Monte Carlo methods.
Johanna G. Nešlehová is a Czech mathematical statistician who works in Canada at McGill University as a professor in the department of mathematics and statistics. Her research interests include copulas, extreme value theory, multivariate statistics, and operational risk.
Kathryn Mary (Kathi) Irvine is an American research statistician for the United States Geological Survey (USGS), affiliated with the Bozeman Environmental and Ecological Statistics Research Group, at the USGS Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center in Bozeman, Montana. Her research involves environmental statistics including both the fundamentals of spatial statistics and its application to wildlife populations including bats, pikas, elk, pine trees, and sagebrush steppes.
