Duke Statistical Science is delighted to have two finalists for the Savage Award in Applied Methodology. The Savage Award, named in honor of Leonard J. “Jimmie” Savage, is bestowed each year by the International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA) to two outstanding doctoral dissertations in Bayesian econometrics and statistics: one in Theory and Methods, and one in Applied Methodology. Each award is accompanied by a monetary prize.
Postdoc Nicholas Marco is nominated for his thesis “Mixed Membership Models with Applications to Neuroimaging," supervised by Donatello Telesca at UCLA. Alessandro Zito (PhD 2023 and current postdoc at Harvard University) is nominated for his thesis “Ecological Modeling via Bayesian Nonparametric Species Sampling Prior, supervised by Arts & Sciences Distinguished Professor David Dunson. Marco and Zito will present their work in a special session at the 2025 Joint Statistical Meetings in Nashville, TN.
The award was instituted by the NBER-NSF Seminar in Bayesian Inference in Econometrics and Statistics in 1977 with an endowed fund supported by royalties from a series of books authored and edited under the auspices of the Seminar on Bayesian Inference in Econometrics. ISBA and the ASA Section on Bayesian Statistical Science (SBSS) joined as co-sponsors in 1993. Additional contributions to the endowment include royalties from the Handbook of Bayesian Econometrics edited by John Geweke, Gary Koop and Herman van Dijk and donations by past recipients of the Savage Prize and members of ISBA.
