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36 amstat news april 2012
Burnham
The Wildlife Society’s highest
honor, the Aldo Leopold
Memorial Award, was recently
awarded to Kenneth P.
Burnham, professor emeritus
of the department of fish, wildlife,
and conservation biology
at Colorado State University
(CSU). The award recognizes
individuals who have made significant
contributions to wildlife
conservation.
Burnham began his career
as a statistician for the U.S.
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Fish and Wildlife Service and
continued as an area statistician
for the USDA Agricultural
Research Service in the southeast
United States. His early
research produced a wide variety
of statistical methods used
by ecologists around the world.
These methods had a profound
impact on the science behind
numerous monitoring programs,
including the northern
spotted owl, endangered desert
tortoise, endangered fish on the
Colorado River, salmon passage
through hydro dams on the
Columbia River, and assistance
in planning and conducting the
2000 U.S. Census.
Starting in 1988, and for the
next 21 years, Burnham held the
position of assistant unit leader
for the Colorado Cooperative
Fish and Wildlife Research Unit
at CSU. His work led to effective
insights into a broad range
of biological systems in many
places throughout the world.
He is a longtime member and
Fellow of the ASA.
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The award is named after
Aldo Leopold, who is considered
the “father” of wildlife science.
Following Leopold’s death
in 1948, the Wildlife Society has
annually awarded an individual
the Aldo Leopold Memorial
Award in his honor. n
Ming Yuan, associate professor
in the H. Milton Stewart
School of Industrial and
Systems Engineering (ISyE),
was recently awarded the Coca-
Cola Junior Professorship for a
three-year term.
The Coca-Cola Junior
Professorship is supported by
a gift from Coca-Cola to support
research and development
in ISyE. Endowed professorships,
such as this one, are
awarded to outstanding faculty,
ensuring them the resources
they need to remain at the
forefront of their fields and
to lead teaching and research
efforts in their key areas.
In addition to this recent
honor, Yuan was the recipient
of the National Science
Foundation Career Award in
2009 for his exemplary work
in sparse modeling and estimation
with high-dimensional
data. He also was named a
Distinguished Cancer Scholar
from the Georgia Cancer
Coalition in 2007 and was
the recipient of the John van
Ryzin Award in 2004.
Yuan earned his PhD in
statistics from the University
of Wisconsin at Madison.
He also holds a master’s in
computer science from the
University of Wisconsin
and a bachelor’s in electrical
engineering and information
science from the University
of Science & Technology of
China. Yuan’s current research
interests include statistical
learning, bioinformatics, and
methods of regularization. n