The David Cox Medal
The David Cox Medal for Statistics commemorates the pioneering statistical work of Sir David Cox in the fields of statistical theory, methodology and applications.
Three medals are awarded every three years by the RSS in partnership with the American Statistical Association (ASA), the Bernoulli Society, the International Biometric Society (IBS), the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS) and the International Statistical Institute (ISI).
Criteria
The award will recognise mid-career individuals, with an age limit of 50 (with exceptions made for mitigating circumstances such as career breaks). Awardees’ research will be original, with conceptual depth and novelty, moving the field or a substantive application area forward.
Candidates for the award will be assessed based on a specified body of work, with a limit of up to five papers. It is not necessary for nominees to be members of any of the partner societies.
2025 winners
Professor Nancy Zhang
Professor Nancy Ruonan Zhang is awarded the David Cox Medal for Statistics for her pioneering contributions to statistical genomics, particularly in cancer and single-cell genomics and their applications in biomedical research. Her work has advanced the analysis of high-dimensional biological data through the development of methods for change-point detection and false positive control, noise reduction in single-cell RNA sequencing, single cell and spatial omic data integration, and cell type deconvolution in bulk tissue analysis. She has also made significant contributions to understanding cancer genome evolution through the development of allele-specific DNA copy number estimation methods that reveal intratumor heterogeneity. Through these contributions, Nancy has demonstrated exceptional leadership in bridging statistical innovation with real-world biomedical challenges, significantly influencing both the statistical and life sciences communities.
Professor Richard Samworth
Professor Richard Samworth, FRS is awarded the David Cox Medal for Statistics for his outstanding contributions to methodological and theoretical statistics. Richard has made numerous seminal contributions including to shape-constrained modelling, high dimensional statistics, change-point analysis and nonparametric classification. These important and broad areas of statistical science encompass the majority of the prevailing topics where statistics has focussed over the past two decades, and Richard has been at the forefront from the outset. In addition to his stellar research contributions, Richard has mentored with distinction many students and young researchers , as well as serving the profession tirelessly through journal editorships and other contributions to multiple statistical societies.
Professor Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen
Professor Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen is awarded the David Cox Medal for Statistics for his outstanding contributions to the development of pioneering statistical theory and methods that have reshaped our understanding and practice of causal inference. Eric’s noteworthy contributions recognised by this award include the development of Proximal Causal Inference and groundbreaking contributions to instrumental variable methodology, two fundamental analytic frameworks for credible causal inference in the face of intractable confounding. Beyond his groundbreaking works on proximal inference and instrumental variables, Eric has made seminal contributions to multiple other areas, including interference, mediation analysis, missing data, conformal inference, survival analysis, higher order influence functions, and data fusion.
Remit of the Prize Committee
The Prize Committee consists of one representative from each partner society, the chair of which will rotate between partners on each cycle. The committee remit is to receive and consider the nominations and to come to an agreement on the medal recipients.
Members:
Tom Belin - ASA
Peter McCullagh (chair) – Bernoulli Society
Ruth Keogh - IBS
Eric B Laber - IMS
Judy Wang - ISI
Sylvia Richardson - RSS
Remit of the Search Committee
The Search Committee consists of two representatives from each partner society, the chair of which will rotate between partners on each cycle.
The value of establishing a search committee will be to ensure consistency of calibre of nominations, to ensure the search is wide and deep and that nominations reflect the diversity of the statistical community.
The Search Committee does not preclude nominations coming from other sources – it is intended as an additional method.
Members:
Andrea Rotnitzky (chair) - ASA
Richard Davis – Bernoulli Society
Judith Rousseau – Bernoulli Society
Alan Welsh - IBS
Tom Louis - IBS
Jianwen Cair - IMS
Veronika Rockova - IMS
Byeong Park - ISI
Pedro Luis do Nascimento Silva - ISI
Christl Donnelly - RSS
Idris Eckley - RSS