James Robins Recognized with COPSS Distinguished Achievement Award

James Robins—IQSS faculty affiliate and Mitchell L. and Robin LaFoley Dong Professor of Epidemiology at the TH Chan School of Public Health—has been recognized by the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS) with the 2025 Distinguished Achievement Award and Lectureship. The prestigious annual award, previously known as the RA Fisher Award and Lectureship from 1963–2019, recognizes "outstanding contributions to statistical methods that have had significant impact on scientific investigation." 

With the 2025 award, COPSS recognizes Robins “for helping create the modern field of causal inference; for developing ground-breaking methods for causal inference; for the analysis of missing data; for semi-and non-parametric models, and for the wide adoption of these methods in public health, clinical medicine, and the social sciences.” 

Robins is widely recognized as a founding figure in the modern statistical field of causal inference. Beginning with his 1986 paper “A new approach to causal inference in mortality studies with a sustained exposure period—application to control of the healthy worker survivor effect,” he introduced some of the most important analytic methods and concepts in the field, including those collectively referred to as “g-methods,” used for drawing causal inferences from complex observational and randomized studies with time-varying treatments or exposure. Over a career of more than 40 years, Robins has applied his methods to research in a variety of topics in epidemiology, public health, and the social sciences, such as HIV/AIDS treatment, arsenic exposure, and bariatric surgery.

"This is among the least surprising awards in the history of the association," says IQSS director and Weatherhead University Professor Gary King. "Jamie Robins is a brilliant contributor of novel statistical methods, causal estimation, and innovative thinking.  It is a privilege to interact with him and have him as part of the IQSS community."

James Robins will accept the Distinguished Achievement Award and deliver the COPSS Distinguished Lecture at this year’s Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM).