Every year, we give awards to statisticians and data professionals that have made exceptional contributions to the field, through cutting edge research, tireless service to the community, making practical advances and innovations and communicating and educating the public about statistics. We also award honorary fellowships to people outside the professions, but who have none the less made great strides in advancing the aims of the Society. Join us for the presentation of these awards at our annual conference in Edinburgh this September.
The following people have all furthered the data disciplines and the Society’s aims through their work and efforts, and we thank them for all they have done and achieved.
Professor Sir John Aston, RSS President, said of this year’s cohort of awardees, ‘Our 2025 honours recipients exemplify the wide-ranging positive impact statistics can have on improving research outcomes and on society.
‘This year’s honorary fellows are exemplary supporters of the discipline, showcasing what can be achieved through collaboration. On behalf of the RSS, I am delighted to give my heartfelt congratulations to all this year’s recipients.’
Greenfield Industrial Medal – Nicky Best: Professor Nicky Best has completed outstanding work in applied Bayesian statistics in public health and social sciences, co-developing the WinBUGS software and leading methodological innovation and data science solutions to improve the efficiency of clinical trials in an industrial context.
Barnett Award – Claire Miller: Professor Claire Miller has made exceptional contributions to environmental statistics, pioneering work in water quality measuring, monitoring and forecasting.
Guy Medal Silver - Richard Samworth: Professor Richard Samworth has made outstanding contributions to the development of methodology and theory for shape-constrained inference, random ensemble classification, data-perturbation techniques, and changepoint estimation, and has also gone above and beyond in supporting other members of the profession.
Guy Medal Bronze – Jenny Wadsworth: Professor Jenny Wadsworth has made important and original contributions to the analysis of multivariate and spatial extremes, improving the understanding of rare events, and, in turn, issues such as climate change.
David Cox Research Prize – Kartik Waghmare: Dr Kartik Waghmare has made ground-breaking contributions to statistical theory, especially on the completion of positive definite kernel functions and the formulation of graphical models for Gaussian processes.
Honorary Fellowships
Fiona Fox
Founding director of the Science Media Centre, Fiona Fox’s leadership role in science communication has provided the public and policymakers with accurate, evidence-based information about STEM via the media.
Marion Oswald
Professor Marion Oswald MBE's work on administrative law for automated systems used by public authorities, driven by her leadership and pragmatism, has been instrumental in integrating ethical principles into data science practice.
Annette Southgate
Professor Annette Southgate has made major contributions across government, industry and academia, raising the importance of the use of data and statistics to support public safety and security challenges.
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