Tiger of the Week: David Donoho '78

David Donoho '78 (Photo: The Shaw Prize Foundation)

Mathematician David Donoho ’78, an expert in statistical estimation, was selected to receive the 2013 Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences last week. The $1 million honor, established in 2002 by the philanthropist Run Run Shaw, will be presented in Hong Kong Sept. 23.

The Shaw Prize selection committee recognized Donoho for his “profound contributions to modern mathematical statistics and in particular the development of optimal algorithms for statistical estimation in the presence of noise and of efficient techniques for sparse representation and recovery in large data-sets,” according to the award citation.

Donoho, the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of the Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University, majored in statistics as an undergraduate, writing his thesis under the direction of Professor John W. Tukey *39. He earned a Ph.D. in statistics from Harvard in 1984 and taught at the University of California, Berkeley, before joining the Stanford faculty in 1991.

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