Professor N. Balakrishnan of McMaster University recipient of the 2015 Samuel Wiener Distinguished Visitor Award
Dr. Professor Narayanaswamy Balakrishnan, courtesy of McMaster University
The Department of Statistics is very pleased to announce that Professor N. Balakrishnan of McMaster University has been selected as the 2015 recipient of the Samuel Wiener Distinguished Visitor Award.
Dr. N. Balakrishnan is Distinguished University Professor at McMaster University, in the department of mathematics and statistics. This is a lifelong honor and there cannot be more than 7 such titles in the whole university in any given year. Balakrishnan is an internationally renowned scientist who has made outstanding contributions to theoretical and applied statistics. He is recognized as international authority on a number of research areas including order statistics, scan statistics, reliability and survival analysis, and many more. Balakrishnan is Editor-in-Chief for Communications in Statistics (3 series) and many book series, and Associate Editor for many international statistics journals of high quality. He has supervised more than 100 graduate students including 48 Ph.D. students. He has authored/co-authored over 20 books, and authored/edited over 40 handbooks and volumes. For many years in the past, he published more than 40 peer reviewed papers in each single year. In total, he has published hundreds of peer reviewed papers. His current NSERC funding is over $200,000, one of the highest awards in statistical science.
Balakrishnan has received many prestigious honours. He was Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute in 1992, Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 1995, Fellow of the Turkish Statistical Association in 2003, Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 2006, and Elected Honorary Member of the Greek Statistical Institute in 2007. He was Distinguished Eugene Lukacs Professor at Bowling Green State University in 2005, Distinguished Santalo Lecturer at Universidad Complutense de Madrid in 2006, Don Owen Award winner from the American Statistical Association in 2008, Valuable Service Award winner from the International Statistical Association in 2010, and McMaster Students Union Teaching Award on five occasions. He was also Vice President and President of the International Indian Statistical Association from 2001 to 2005. He is Distinguished Visiting University Professor at Ren-min University (China) since 2009, at King Saud University (Saudi Arabia) during 2010-2011, and at King Abdulaziz University (Saudi Arabia) from 2013 to 2015, and Visiting Professor at over 30 national and international universities.
Balakrishnan will visit University of Manitoba from July 4 until July 23, 2015. He will teach a senior undergraduate/graduate course (July 6-17) on Ordered Data Analysis with Applications, present a public lecture on July 20, and give a Colloquium talk in the Department of Community Health Sciences on July 21. During his visit, Balakrishnan will collaborate extensively with researchers at University of Manitoba, particularly with members of the Department of Statistics.