Storey receives COPSS Presidents' Award for outstanding statisticians 40 or younger

John Storey

John Storey

Photo by Denise Applewhite, Office of Communications

John Storey, Princeton University's William R. Harman '63 and Mary-Love Harman Professor in Genomics and professor in the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, has received the 2015 COPSS Presidents' Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to statistics by a researcher aged 40 or younger. Presented by the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS), the award is one of the most prestigious in the field.

Storey was recognized by the committee for his "transformative and groundbreaking research" in developing statistics for "high-dimensional data-analysis problems" in the areas of biology, medicine and health care. Storey also was commended for his interdisciplinary work, which, at Princeton, includes related appointments from molecular biology to computer science.

Storey is director of Princeton's Center for Statistics and Machine Learning, which focuses on understanding and developing data-analysis tools. His research includes work published in 2011 that found that all people recovering from a serious injury exhibit similar gene activity as their condition changes, which doctors can use to predict and prepare for a patient's deterioration. That work, which was part of a 10-year, $100-million effort based at Massachusetts General Hospital, drew from 50,000 documented genetic measurements collected from 168 patients during 28 days.

His past honors include the 2015 Mortimer Spiegelman Award, given by the American Public Health Association to a statistician 40 or younger who has made important contributions to health statistics, especially public health statistics. Storey also was elected as a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 2012, and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2011.

Established in 1981, the Presidents' Award is bestowed by five statistical societies: the American Statistical Association; the Statistical Society of Canada; the Institute of Mathematical Statistics; the Eastern North American Region of the International Biometric Society; and the Western North American Region of the International Biometric Society. Past recipients include 2000 awardee Jianqing Fan, now Princeton's Frederick L. Moore, Class of 1918, Professor in Finance and a professor of operations research and financial engineering.