The International Prize in Statistics Foundation has awarded Grace Wahba the 2025 prize in recognition of her groundbreaking work on smoothing splines, which has transformed modern data analysis and machine learning.
Professor Wahba was among the earliest to pioneer the use of nonparametric regression modeling. Recent advances in computing and availability of large data sets have further popularised these models, especially under the guise of machine learning algorithms such as gradient boosting and neural networks. Nevertheless, the use of smoothing splines remains a mainstay of nonparametric regression.
Wahba earned her PhD in statistics from Stanford University in 1966 and joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1967 as the first female faculty member in the department of statistics. She remained there for 51 years before retiring in 2018 as I. J. Schoenberg-Hilldale Professor Emerita, having mentored many subsequent researchers and been a role model to female mathematicians everywhere. Her work has seen practical applications in fields ranging from climate science to medical imaging and has also been recognised as foundational in modern machine learning.
Chair of the International Prize in Statistics Foundation, Jessica Utts, said: ‘Grace Wahba's contributions have had a profound and lasting impact on statistical methodology and practice. Her early insights into regularization and smoothing have become essential tools used daily by statisticians and data scientists working across nearly every scientific field.’
Sir Bernard Silverman, past president of the RSS and Institute of Mathematical Statistics, said: ‘Grace has been an inspiration and a role model to me ever since I first met her 50 years ago. She was one of the pioneers of genuinely applicable computational statistics and always spent time talking to people in applied fields, as well as in statistics.’
The International Prize in Statistics is awarded every two years by a collaboration among five leading international statistics organisations. It recognises a major achievement by an individual or team in the statistics field, particularly an achievement of powerful and original ideas that has led to practical applications and breakthroughs in other disciplines.
Professor Wahba will receive the prize, which includes an $80,000 award, in October 2025 at the World Statistics Congress, organised by the International Statistical Institute.
Read more about the prize and about Wahba’s achievements on the
prize website.