Kostas Kalogeropoulos, recent Doctoral graduate of AUEB's Department of Statistics (Petros Dellaportas, advisor) has been selected as one of the two finalists for the famous Savage Award

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.

Each award is accompanied by a monetary prize.

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

Every year, there are two finalists selected for each category, internationally. This year, Kostas Kalogeropoulos, a graduate of AUEB’s Department of Statistics (Advisor Prof Petros Dellaportas) is one of the two finalists selected for the Theory and Methods prize. More specifically, this year’s finalist candidates are:

For the "Theory & Methods" Prize:

1. Kostas Kalogeropoulos, Bayesian Inference for Multidimensional Diffusion Processes. Athens University of Economics and Business; Prof. Petros Dellaportas, advisor.
2. Iain Murray, Advances in Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. University College London; Prof. Zoubin Ghahramani, advisor.

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.

For the "Applied Methodology" Prize:

1. Edoardo M. Airoldi, Bayesian Mixed-Membership Models of Complex and Evolving Networks. Carnegie Mellon University; Profs. Stephen E. Fienberg and Kathleen Carley, advisors.
2. Vladimir Minin, Exploring Evolutionary Heterogeneity with Change-Point Models, Gaussian Markov Random Fields, and Markov Chain Induced Counting Processes. UCLA; Prof. Marc Suchard, advisor.

The winners will be announced in July 2008, at the 9th Internationa ISBA (International Society for Bayesian Analysis) Meeting, ISBA '08.