SACNAS Honors Distinguished Awardees at 2020 National Diversity in STEM Conference

2020 SACNAS DISTINGUISHED SCIENTIST AWARD 

Javier Rojo, PhD

Korvis Professor of Statistics, Oregon State University 

Dr. Rojo received a BS in mathematics from University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), an MS in statistics from Stanford University, and a PhD in statistics from University of California at Berkeley under the direction of Erich L. Lehmann. He is currently the Korvis Professor of Statistics at Oregon State University. Dr. Rojo’s research interests include survival analysis, partial orders of distribution functions and related inference problems, extreme value theory and tail-heaviness of distributions, nonparametric function estimation, statistical decision theory, random matrices, and dimension reduction techniques.  Prior to his current appointment, Dr. Rojo was assistant professor, associate professor (1990 – 1995), and professor (1995 – 2000) of statistics at UTEP where he founded the BioStatistical Laboratory; the Seneca C. and Mary B. Weeks endowed Chair of Statistics and Chair of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Nevada at Reno where he led the successful efforts to create two new PhD. programs; Professor of Statistics at Rice University where he created a Research Experience of Undergrads called RUSIS, which has had 246 participants and 40 alumni subsequently receiving their PhDs. Dr. Rojo is also an adjunct professor at the MD Anderson Cancer Center and the Civil Engineering department at Rice. He has held positions at Sandia Labs, The Rand Corporation, Pacific Gas and Electric, and El Paso Natural Gas Co. He is a Fellow of the following societies: American Statistical Association (ASA), Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS), Royal Statistical Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. He received the ASA 2010 Don Owen award, and the 2018 Etta Z. Falconer award. Dr. Rojo currently serves in SAMSI’s Scientific Advisory Committee, ICERM’s Education Advisory Board, and on several editorial boards and committees for various scientific societies. He has collaborated with faculty at the Center of Mathematical Research in Guanajuato and has organized several international conferences in México. Dr. Rojo grew up in Ciudad Juárez, México where he dreamt about being Mickey Mantle’s successor in center field for the New York Yankees. Although he played NCAA baseball for UTEP and was selected to play in the Pan-American games representing México, his hopes for a professional career were dashed due to an injury. He now roots for the thrice NCAA Champions — OSU Beavers!