After graduating from the University of Queensland (UQ) with a BSc(Hons I) in 1974, Kaye was initially employed as a biometrician – an experience which showed her that true collaboration was an excellent platform for innovative and productive outcomes. She obtained her PhD in 1985 (via part-time study), followed by a Fulbright Postdoctoral Fellowship with Walt Federer at Cornell University. In 1988, she joined academia, currently being Head of the School of Land, Crop and Food Sciences at UQ and Deputy President of the Academic Board.

Kaye’s research has focussed on developing appropriate multivariate methodology for the analysis and interpretation of genotypic adaptation in large-scale plant breeding experiments – basically enabling scientists to integrate qualitative, quantitative and molecular data to provide both a global and local summary of the interaction and relationships among genotypes, environments and attributes. She has considerable international experience working with scientists in the United States, Europe and Asia, including those in the Co-operative Group on International Agricultural Research which focuses on food production in the developing world.

This research work resulted in two books – McLachlan and Basford (1988) on the mixture method of clustering and Basford and Tukey (1999) on graphical approaches to analysing multiresponse data – and receipt of the 1998 Australian Medal for Agriculture from the Australian Institute of Agricultural Science and Technology. She has also published extensively in the peer-reviewed literature, given invited presentations at national and international conferences, and led or assisted in the training of over 20 research graduates.

In 2006, Kaye was awarded a Fellowship with the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering for having developed statistical methods that are used world-wide to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of crop breeding programs. Her recent research extends to modelling and bioinformatics (which includes information technology, data management, integration and analysis).

In summary, Kaye’s career is at the interface between statistics and agricultural science, working with colleagues to determine the best way to extract knowledge and gain meaningful insight. As well, she has been committed to the networking and development opportunities available through professional societies: being a Past President of the Statistical Society of Australia and President-elect of the International Biometric Society. Kaye was recently appointed as a Commissioning Editor for Crop and Pasture Science.

Jim Berger received a Ph.D. in mathematics from Cornell University in 1974. He was a faculty member in the Department of Statistics at Purdue University until 1997, at which time he moved to the Institute of Statistics and Decision Sciences (now the Department of Statistical Science) at Duke University, where he is currently the Arts and Sciences Professor of Statistics. He has also been Director of the national Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute since 2002.

Berger was president of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics from 1995-1996, chair of the Section on Bayesian Statistical Science of the American Statistical Association in 1995, and president of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis during 2004. He has been involved with numerous editorial activities, including co-editorship of the Annals of Statistics during the period 1998-2000, and has organized or participated in the organization of over 35 conferences.

Among the awards and honors Berger has received are Guggenheim and Sloan Fellowships, the COPSS President's Award in 1985, the Sigma Xi Research Award at Purdue University for contribution of the year to science in 1993, the Fisher Lectureship in 2001, election as foreign member of the Spanish Real Academia de Ciencias in 2002, election to the USA National Academy of Sciences in 2003, award of an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Purdue University in 2004, and the Wald Lectureship in 2007.

Berger's research has primarily been in Bayesian statistics, foundations of statistics, statistical decision theory, simulation, model selection, and various interdisciplinary areas of science and industry, especially astronomy and the interface between computer modeling and statistics. He has supervised 31 Ph.D. dissertations, published over 160 articles and has written or edited 14 books or special volumes.

Visit Professor Berger’s personal webpage at http://www.stat.duke.edu/~berger/

After mathematical studies at the Catholic University of Leuven in his native country, Belgium, Jef Teugels finished his PhD in Statistics at Purdue University, U.S.A. in 1967. He then returned to his Alma Mater where he stayed until his retirement in 2004. He held a number of visiting positions in U.S.A., UK, Portugal, Indonesia, Australia, Japan and South Africa. Jef Teugels was the first Scientific Secretary of the Bernoulli Society and functioned as its President (1995-97). Within the International Statistical Institute he was Vice-President (2001-03), President-Elect (2007-09) and is currently President (2009-11). Other professional memberships are the Societe Belge de Statistique, Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the London Mathematical Society.

Apart from organizing a plethora of statistical conferences, Jef Teugels was involved in editorial work, especially as an Advisor for the Wiley Series in Probability and Mathematical Sciences and as Editor-in-Chief of Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry (1999 - 2008). Teugels is the author of some 100 scientific papers and 4 text-books. He was Section Editor of the Encyclopedia of Environmetrics and the Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Actuarial Science. Besides probability theory, stochastic processes, actuarial mathematics and environmetrics, he has strong interests in scientific aspects of music.

Professor Edward J. Wegman received his B.S. in mathematics degree from St. Louis University in 1965. He received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mathematical statistics from the University of Iowa, the latter degree in 1968. Subsequently, he spent 10 years on the faculty of the world-class Department of Statistics at the University of North Carolina. Dr. Wegman's early career focused on the development of aspects of the theory of mathematical statistics. In 1978, Professor Wegman went to the Office of Naval Research (ONR) where he was the Head of the Mathematical Sciences Division. Dr. Wegman was the original program director of the basic research program in Ultra High Speed Computing at the Strategic Defense Initiative's Innovative Science and Technology Office (Star Wars Program).

Dr. Wegman came to George Mason University in 1986. He was involved with the development of the Institute for Computational Science and Informatics, now the School of Computational Sciences, and the Ph.D. program in Computational Sciences and Informatics at George Mason University.

He has been consultant to a variety of governmental and private sector organizations including the states of North Carolina and Ohio, the U.S. Navy and the Executive Office of Management and Budget. He has organized some fifteen major workshops and conferences, including the 1988, the 2002, and the 2006 Symposia on the Interface of Computing Science and Statistics. He has served as associate editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association, Statistics and Probability Letters, Communications in Statistics, the Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference, the Naval Research Logistics Quarterly, now Naval Research Logistics, Computational Statistics and Data Analysis and the Journal of Nonparametric Statistics. Dr. Wegman completed a four-year term as the Theory and Methods editor of the prestigious Journal of the American Statistical Association. He has published more than 160 papers and eight books. His professional stature has been recognized by his election as Fellow of the American Statistical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Washington Academy of Science and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. In addition he was elected as a Senior Member of IEEE. Dr. Wegman has been elected to membership in the International Statistical Institute. Dr. Wegman has also received numerous Navy awards including the Navy's Meritorious Civilian Service Medal. Wegman has received the 1990 Distinguished Faculty Award and the 1999 Outstanding Research Award from George Mason University, the 1999 Army Wilks Medal from the U.S. Army, the 2002 Founder's Award from the Ameican Statistical Association, and the 2004 Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award from the University of Iowa. Dr. Wegman is the Bernard J. Dunn Professor of Information Technology and Applied Statistics, the Chair of the Data Sciences Program in the School of Computational Sciences, and the Director of the Center for Computational Statistics. He was the founding Chair of the Department of Applied and Engineering Statistics.

Visit Professor Wegman’s personal webpage at http://www.galaxy.gmu.edu/~ewegman/