Kostas Kalogeropoulos, recent doctoral graduate of AUEB's Dept of Statistics (P. Dellaportas, advisor), is the winner of the Savage Award for the best doctoral dissertation of 2007

Kostas Kalogeropoulos, recent doctoral graduate of AUEB's Dept of Statistics (Petros Dellaportas, advisor) is the winner of the famous Savage Award for the best Bayesian thesis of 2007 in category "Theory and methods". This is the first time that the award is given to a doctoral dissertation from a Greek University.

The Savage Award

The well-known Savage Award, named in honor of Leonard J. "Jimmie" Savage, is bestowed each year to two outstanding doctoral dissertations in Bayesian econometrics and statistics, one each in:

• Theory and Methods: for a dissertation that makes important original contributions to the foundations, theoretical developments, and/or general methodology of Bayesian analysis.

• Applied Methodology: for a dissertation that makes outstanding contributions with novel Bayesian analysis of a substantive problem that has potential to impact statistical practice in a field of application.

The award was instituted by the NBER-NSF Seminar in Bayesian Inference in Econometrics and Statistics in 1977. The Institute for Bayesian Analysis and the American Statistical Association Section on Bayesian Statistical Science (SBSS) joined as co-sponsors in 1993.

Winners of the Savage Award 2007

• Theory & Methods

Kostas Kalogeropoulos (Winner), Bayesian Inference for Multidimensional Diffusion Processes. Athens Univ Econ and Business; Petros Dellaportas, advisor
Iain Murray (Honorable Mention), Advances in Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. Univ College London, Zoubin Ghahramani, advisor.

• Applied Methodology

Vladimir Minin (Winner), Exploring Evolutionary Heterogeneity with Change-Point Models, Gaussian Markov Random Fields, and Markov Chain Induced Counting Processes. UCLA; Marc Suchard, advisor.

Edoardo M. Airoldi (Honorable Mention), Bayesian Mixed-Membership Models of Complex and Evolving Networks. CMU; Stephen E. Fienberg and Kathleen Carley, advisors.

Dr. Kalogeropoulos is currently a postdoc student in the University of Cambridge and from 1/9/08 he will be a Lecturer in London School of Economics.