UCLA Fielding School of Public Health professor named 2020 AAAS Fellow

Sudipto Banerjee, professor and chair of the Department of Biostatistics at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Election as an AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.

This year 489 members have been awarded this honor by AAAS because of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. The Fellows will be formally announced in the AAAS News & Notes section of the journal Science on November 27, 2020. A virtual Fellows Forum – an induction ceremony for the new Fellows –will be held on February 13, 2021.

As part of the AAAS Statistics section, Professor Banerjee was elected as an AAAS Fellow for innovative contributions to Bayesian methodology with focus on spatially indexed information, for high-impact applications, for educational and mentoring excellence, professional service and academic administration.

“I am indeed very honored by the conferral of this fellowship and am deeply humbled to know that I was nominated by the steering group of the Statistics Section of the AAAS,” Banerjee said. “The importance of statistics, as a discipline, to the advancement of science cannot be undermined; from climate change to viral pandemics, the scientific community is facing a data deluge that needs statistical analysis and stochastic algorithms to answer complex scientific questions.”

Professor Banerjee joined the Department of Biostatistics in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health at UCLA as professor and chair in 20x14.

Banerjee’s honors include the Abdel El-Shaarawi Award from The International Environmetric Society (TIES), the Mortimer Spiegelman Award from the American Public Health Association, and the George W. Snedecor Award from the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS), He is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, holds elected fellowships in the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS), the American Statistical Association (ASA), and the International Society for Bayesian Analysis, and has received a Distinguished Achievement Medal from the ASA's Section on Statistics and the Environment and the ASA's Outstanding Statistical Application Award.

The tradition of AAAS Fellows began in 1874. Currently, members can be considered for the rank of Fellow if nominated by the steering groups of the association’s 24 sections, or by any three Fellows who are current AAAS members (so long as two of the three sponsors are not affiliated with the nominee’s institution), or by the AAAS chief executive officer.

Fellows must have been continuous members of AAAS for four years by the end of the calendar year in which they are elected. The AAAS Fellow honor comes with an expectation that recipients maintain the highest standards of professional ethics and scientific integrity.

Each steering group reviews the nominations of individuals within its respective section and a final list is forwarded to the AAAS Council, which votes on the aggregate list.

The Council is the policymaking body of the Association, chaired by the AAAS president, and consisting of the members of the board of directors, the retiring section chairs, delegates from each electorate and each regional division, and two delegates from the National Association of Academies of Science.

AAAS encourages its sections and Council to consider diversity among those nominated and selected as Fellows, in keeping with the association’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.

The UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, founded in 1961, is dedicated to enhancing the public's health by conducting innovative research, training future leaders and health professionals from diverse backgrounds, translating research into policy and practice, and serving our local communities and the communities of the nation and the world. The school has 631 students from 26 nations engaged in carrying out the vision of building healthy futures in greater Los Angeles, California, the nation and the world.