Leo Breiman Award

The Breiman Award Committee of Statistical Learning and Data Science Section invites applications for the senior award in honor of Professor Leo Breiman (1928-2005).

Breiman's work helped to bridge the gap between statistics and computer science, particularly in the field of machine learning. His most important contributions were his work on classification and regression trees, ensemble estimators, and random forests.

The Breiman Award Committee selects the Breiman senior scholar and junior scholar based on outstanding theoretical or methodological contributions to machine learning and/or computational statistics, contributions which have made a substantial, sustained impact on the subject and on practical applications. Nominations are accepted in odd-numbered years.

The award includes a monetary prize, a plaque, and an invited lecture at JSM two years later.

The Breiman junior scholar must have received a doctoral degree no earlier than 2009 and been a SLDS section member at least for two years, as of December 15, 2021.

The Breiman Award is given every two years.

Call for Nominations

Nominations for the 2026 Breiman Awards will begin in Fall 2025. Stay tuned for solicitation.

Nomination Packet Requirements

· A nominating letter detailing the qualifications of the nominee.

· Up to three supporting letters, with the option for the nominator to contribute one.

· The curriculum vitae of the nominee, highlighting relevant accomplishments and contributions.

Submission Instructions

Nomination packets should be sent by email to

Breiman Award Committee Chair

Professor Ming Yuan

Department of Statistics

Columbia University

Email: ming.yuan@columbia.edu

Leo Breiman Award Winners

Congratulations to the Leo Breiman Award Winners in 2026:

Senior Award Winner: Tony Cai, University of Pennsylvania

Junior Award Winners: Yuxin Chen, University of Pennsylvania; Anru Zhang, Duke University

Many thanks to the committee members:

Ming Yuan (Chair, Columbia University)
Liza Levina (University of Michigan)
Alessandro Rinaldo (University of Texas at Austin)
Mladen Kolar (University of Southern California)
Jing Lei (Carnegie Mellon University)

A list of previous Leo Breiman Award Winners is as follows:

Senior Award Winners

2024 Robert Tibshirani, Stanford University
2022 Susan Murphy, Harvard University
2020 Trevor Hastie, Stanford University
2018 Bin Yu, University of California, Berkeley
2016 Grace Wahba, University of Wisconsin Madison

Junior Award Winners

2024 Mladen Kolar, University of Southern California
Rahul Mazumder, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2022 Jing Lei, Carnegie Mellon University
Ali Shojaie, University of Washington
2020 Daniela Witten, University of Washington
2018 Yichao Wu, University of Illinois at Chicago
2016 Yufeng Liu, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Ming Yuan, University of Wisconsin