A doctoral student and a recent graduate in statistics (STAT) at Rice are the 2021 winners of the James R. Thompson Student Awards.
The awards were given before the annual James R. Thompson Lecture on Jan. 31. Honored were Huiming Lin, a fifth-year graduate student, and Emma Zohner, who earned her Ph.D. in December and now works as principal data scientist at the Houston office of Engine No. 1, a hedge fund based in San Francisco.
Lin was recognized for her contributions to statistical methodology, theory and computing, and for her “involvement in collaborative and impactful biomedical research,” including “data-driven guidance for managing pregnant patients with COVID-19.” Her adviser is Meng Li, the Noah Harding Assistant Professor of STAT.
The award recognized Zohner, who accepted the honor virtually, for her biomedical research leading to HepatoScore, a data-driven risk assessment tool based on biomarkers for hepatocellular carcinoma. In the words of the award, HepatoScore “has the potential to change clinical practice, methodology and computing research in high-dimensional functional data analysis.”
Zohner’s advisers were Meng Li and Jeffrey Morris, professor of biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania.
The Thompson Lecture was delivered by Adrian Raferty, the Boeing International Professor of Statistics and Sociology, and founding director of the Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. He spoke on “Probabilistic Sea-Ice Forecasting.”
The lecture series is named for James Thompson, who joined the Rice faculty in 1970 and retired after 46 years. In 1987, statistics moved from the mathematics science department to the school of social sciences and became a separate department with Thompson as the founding chair. The department moved to the George R. Brown School of Engineering in 1990. Thompson died in 2018.
“Jim Thompson was always a strong advocate for our doctoral students,” said Rudy Guerra, professor and chair of STAT. “He advocated for student success and diversity, and would take a personal interest in helping people, especially students. It’s only appropriate that we recognize him by rewarding student accomplishments.”
Pictured above on left, Katherine B. Ensor, the Noah G. Harding Professor of Statistics, recognizes Huiming Lin with the James Thompson Student Award. On right: Emma Zohner accepts the award virtually.