COPSS Award for alumnus Martin Wainwright

Friday, October 17, 2014

Congratulations to University of Waterloo BMath alumnus Martin Wainwright, winner of the 2014 Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS) Award.

The award is presented annually to a young member of the statistical community in recognition of outstanding contributions to the profession.

Past Waterloo alumni to receive this honour include Ross Prentice (University of Washington), Nancy Reid (University of Toronto) and Rob Tibshirani (Stanford).

Professor Wainwright, now a faculty member in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and Statistics at Berkeley, graduated with a BMath from Waterloo majoring in applied mathematics with a minor in pure mathematics.

"It is wonderful to see Martin's broad, rigorous and highly impactful research being recognized in this way," says Professor Richard Cook. "The COPSS Award is widely regarded as the most prestigious recognition in the statistical sciences and he is a most worthy recipient.”

Read about Professor Wainwright's views on the discipline and his advice for young statisticians (build a strong background in basic mathematics and gain exposure to real-world problems) in this interview with Simply Statistics.