The Department of Statistics at Rice University has established the James R. Thompson Distinguished Lecture Series and the James R. Thompson Student Award in Statistics to honor the life of the Rice professor and founding chair of our department in 1987.
The goal of the series is to bring to campus internationally recognized scholars in the field of statistics to deliver talks to multidisciplinary audiences on topics of broad interest. The lecture series is supported by an endowed James R. Thompson Memorial Fund through the generous contributions of family, friends, and colleagues. This series is NISS Sponsored and Affiliate Award Fund Eligible.
The James R. Thompson Student Award is presented to the recipient(s) at the annual lecture event.
Upcoming Lecture
The 2024 James R. Thompson Distinguished Lecture is scheduled to take place:
February 5, 2024
at 4pm
with awardee Alicia Carriquiry, Iowa State University
In person in McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall
Past Lectures
- 2023 - "Data Science To Address The Health Impacts Of Climate Change" - Francesca Dominici, Director of the Harvard Data Science Initiative, at Harvard University and the Clarence James Gamble Professor of Biostatistics, Population and Data Science at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
- 2022 - "Probabilistic Sea-Ice Forecasting" - Adrian Raftery, Boeing International Professor of Statistics & Sociology Founding Director, Center of Statistics and Social Sciences, University of Washington in Seattle
- 2019 - "Simulation: A plot twist" - Mark Hansen, Director, David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation & Professor of Journalism, Columbia Journalism School
- 2018 - "The Critical Role of Statistics in Evaluating Forensic Evidence" - Karen Kafadar, University of Virginia