Sudipto Banerjee (born October 23, 1972) is an Indian-American

statistician A statistician is a person who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, and statisticians may wor ...

best known for his work on

Bayesian hierarchical modeling Bayesian hierarchical modelling is a statistical model written in multiple levels (hierarchical form) that estimates the parameters of the posterior distribution using the Bayesian method.Allenby, Rossi, McCulloch (January 2005)"Hierarchical Bayes ...

and inference for

spatial data analysis Spatial analysis or spatial statistics includes any of the formal techniques which studies entities using their topological, geometric, or geographic properties. Spatial analysis includes a variety of techniques, many still in their early deve ...

. He is Professor and Chair of the Department of Biostatistics in the School of Public Health at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a Normal school, teachers colle ...

. He served as the 2022 President of the

International Society for Bayesian Analysis The International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA) is a society with the goal of promoting Bayesian analysis for solving problems in the sciences and government. It was formally incorporated as a not for profit corporation by economist Arnold ...

Early life and education

Banerjee was born in

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

, India. He attended

Presidency College, Kolkata Presidency University, Kolkata (formerly known as Presidency College, Kolkata) is a second major public state aided research university located in College Street, Kolkata. Considered as one of best colleges when Presidency College was affilia ...

for his undergraduate studies, and the

Indian Statistical Institute Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) is a higher education and research institute which is recognized as an Institute of National Importance by the 1959 act of the Indian parliament. It grew out of the Statistical Laboratory set up by Prasanta C ...

, graduating with an M.STAT in 1996. Subsequently, he moved to the United States and obtained an MS and PhD in Statistics from the

University of Connecticut The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university in Storrs, Connecticut, a village in the town of Mansfield. The primary 4,400-acre (17.8 km2) campus is in Storrs, approximately a half hour's drive from H ...

in 2000, where he was introduced to Bayesian statistics and hierarchical modeling by

Alan Enoch Gelfand Alan E. Gelfand (born April 17, 1945) is an American statistician, and is currently the James B. Duke Professor of Statistics and Decision Sciences at Duke University. Gelfand’s research includes substantial contributions to the fields of Bayes ...

who had been instrumental in the development of the

Gibbs sampler In statistics, Gibbs sampling or a Gibbs sampler is a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm for obtaining a sequence of observations which are approximated from a specified multivariate probability distribution, when direct sampling is diff ...

and

Markov chain Monte Carlo In statistics, Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods comprise a class of algorithms for sampling from a probability distribution. By constructing a Markov chain that has the desired distribution as its equilibrium distribution, one can obtain ...

algorithms in Bayesian statistics.

Career

Banerjee joined the

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. T ...

in 2000 as an Assistant Professor of

Biostatistics Biostatistics (also known as biometry) are the development and application of statistical methods to a wide range of topics in biology. It encompasses the design of biological experiments, the collection and analysis of data from those experime ...

and was associated with the School of Public Health for 14 years. There he worked on a number of problems and wrote numerous articles on

spatial statistics Spatial analysis or spatial statistics includes any of the formal techniques which studies entities using their topological, geometric, or geographic properties. Spatial analysis includes a variety of techniques, many still in their early develo ...

, developing theory and methods related to Bayesian modeling and inference for geographic data with wide-ranging applications in public and environmental health sciences, ecology, forestry, real estate economics and agronomy. In 2014, Banerjee joined the Department of Biostatistics in the School of Public Health at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a Normal school, teachers colle ...

as Professor and Chair of Biostatistics.

Awards and honors

Banerjee has received many honors, including the Abdel El-Shaarawi Award from The International Environmetric Society (TIES), the Mortimer Spiegelman Award from the American Public Health Association and the

George W. Snedecor Award The Snedecor Award, named after George W. Snedecor, is given by the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies to a statistician for contribution to biometry. Winners * 1977: A. P. Dawid * 1978: Bruce W. Turnbull * 1979: Ethel S. Gilb ...

from the

Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies The Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS) comprises the presidents, past presidents and presidents-elect of the following, primarily Northern American, professional societies of statisticians: * American Statistical Association * ...

(COPSS), elected membership of the

International Statistical Institute The International Statistical Institute (ISI) is a professional association of statisticians. It was founded in 1885, although there had been international statistical congresses since 1853. The institute has about 4,000 elected members from gov ...

, elected fellowships in the

Institute of Mathematical Statistics The Institute of Mathematical Statistics is an international professional and scholarly society devoted to the development, dissemination, and application of statistics and probability. The Institute currently has about 4,000 members in all parts ...

(IMS), the

American Statistical Association The American Statistical Association (ASA) is the main professional organization for statisticians and related professionals in the United States. It was founded in Boston, Massachusetts on November 27, 1839, and is the second oldest continuous ...

(ASA), the

and the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsi ...

(AAAS), a Distinguished Achievement Medal from the ASA's Section on Statistics and the Environment, and the ASA's Outstanding Statistical Application Award.

Selected works

* * * * * * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Banerjee, Sudipto Don Bosco schools alumni Indian Statistical Institute alumni University of Calcutta alumni Indian statisticians Biostatisticians University of Connecticut alumni Living people UCLA School of Public Health faculty 1972 births 20th-century Indian mathematicians Elected Members of the International Statistical Institute Fellows of the American Statistical Association Fellows of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Scientists from Kolkata