It has been a quiet six months for the Awards Committee, with the only business being the assessment of applications to the Campbell Bequest Fund. Two awards were made. The first was to John Harraway (University of Otago) to fund travel costs associated with a project on the development of bootstrapping and randomisation in New Zealand high schools. The second was to support the organization of the 2011 New Zealand Mathematics and Statistics Postgraduate Conference, which will take place at Silverstream Retreat (near Upper Hutt) in November. Both fit very well with the educational focus of the Campbell Bequest Fund, and with Professor Campbell’s interests.

NZSA members are invited to submit applications to the Campbell Bequest Fund at any time of the year. Details can be found on the webpage.

The Association recently called for nominations for its premier honour, the Campbell Award.

Martin Hazelton
Convenor, NZSA Awards Committee

Congratulations to Professor Estate Khmaladze

Congratulations to Professor Estate Khmaladze, School of Mathematics, Statistics and Operations Research, Victoria University of Wellington, who has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. Estate is "regarded as a leading international expert in statistical models, making significant contributions in not only theoretical work, but also for statistical problems in finance, insurance and other related fields".

Kit Withers, DSc

The University of Auckland awarded a DSc to Kit Withers on May 4, based on 76 of his papers in Mathematical Statistics. The chair of the committee was Peter Hall of ANU. See http://homepages.slingshot.co.nz/~kitw for a list of Kit’s papers.

This was the only DSc awarded this year by the University of Auckland, and the first in the mathematical sciences, although there was one in mathematical physics 20 years or so ago.

Ross Haines named Woolf Fisher Scholar

Congratulations to Ross Haines, an Otago University graduate with a BSc (Hons) degree in statistics, who has been awarded a Woolf Fisher Scholarship. Ross will travel to Oxford University to undertake doctoral studies. He’ll be researching medieval manuscripts from the 13th and 14th centuries, applying mathematical models to pinpoint the manuscripts’ origins and their historical context.