Robert Tibshirani named Royal Society Fellow

Rob Tibshirani is now among the distinguished scientists elected to the Royal Society for their exceptional contributions to the improvement of natural knowledge. In fulfillment of its fundamental purpose, “to use science for the benefit of humanity”, the Society noted that Rob has made important contributions to the statistical analysis of complex datasets. Some of his most well-known contributions are the lasso, which uses L1 penalization in regression and related problems, generalized additive models and significance analysis of microarrays (SAM), in addition to co-authoring four widely used books: Generalized Additive Models, An Introduction to the Bootstrap, The Elements of Statistical Learning, and Sparsity in Statistics: the Lasso and its Generalizations. He co-authored the first study that linked cell phone usage with car accidents, a widely cited article that has played a role in the introduction of legislation that restricts the use of phones while driving. Professor Tibshirani is one of the most widely cited authors in the mathematical sciences field, and this latest recognition of his remarkable accomplishments is truly deserved. Congratulations, Rob!