During his tenure as SSA President, Prof Adrian Barnett established the President’s Award for Leadership in Statistics. The intention of the award is to recognise an individual or team who has made an outstanding contribution to leadership in statistics, and each President may award one of these during their tenure.

Over the last two years, COVID-19 has meant that statisticians all around Australia, and internationally, have stepped up to provide public commentary on statistical issues, and provide advice to governments. These contributions are worthy and appreciated.

However, the group of individuals who I wish to recognise with my President’s award made contributions over the last two years that were less public. Over the last two years, when so many of us felt isolated, were confined to our homes, and were separated from our families and friends, this group of individuals worked extremely hard to maintain a sense of community among statisticians. So, in recognition of their leadership of the statistical community around Australia over the last two years, I wish to nominate all Branch Councils of the SSA from March 2020 to March 2022 for my President’s Award for Leadership in Statistics.

When the pandemic was declared in March 2020 and in-person gatherings banned, the SSA Branch Councils worked hard to continue serving their members. By pivoting to online events, a sense of community within our profession was not only maintained, but strengthened: members now had access not only to their local Branch’s events, but to SSA events happening all across Australia. I myself benefited greatly from this: tuning into inspiring and interesting presentations from across Australia helped me to get through the long, locked-down Melbourne winters. With restrictions now a thing of the past, I am pleased to see that Branches are continuing to offer virtual attendance options for some events, making SSA events accessible to a greater proportion of our members than ever before.

So: in recognition of their leadership of the statistical community across Australia during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, I am awarding the SSA Branch Councils from March 2020 to March 2022 my President’s Award for Leadership in Statistics, with the names of all awardees listed below. Each of these people can claim receipt of the “SSA President’s Award for Leadership in Statistics, awarded to the 2020-2022 Branch Councils”.

Jessica Kasza, August 2022

New South Wales	Victoria
Thomas Fung	Emi Tanaka
Clara Grazian	Damjan Vukcevic
Runze Alex Xu	Ben Harrap
Boris Beranger	Elizabeth Korevaar
Matt Wand	Cameron Patrick
Benoit Liquet-Weiland	Rheanna Mainzer
Houying Zhu	Lidija Turkovic
Firouzeh Noghrehchi	Daniel Fryer
Gordana Popovic	Lauren Kennedy
Luca Maestrini	Hien Nguyen
Joanna Wang	Patrick Robotham
Nicole de la Mata	Kevin Wang
Yidi Yan	Kohleth Chia
Jake Olivier	South Australia
Munir Hiabu	Murthy Mittinty
Ardalan Mirzaei	Barbara Toson
Mark Donoghoe	Aarti Gulyani
Matias Quiroz	Paul Sutcliffe
Western Australia	Wendy Li
Alun Pope	Shahid Ullah
Brenton Clarke	Helena Oakey
Shih Ching Fu	Lan Kelly
Torben Kimhofer	Kylie Lange
Deneegan Subramanian	Canberra
Fadzai Chikwava	Francis Hui
John Henstridge	Warren Muller
Rick Tankard	Nick Husek
Alethea Rea	Pauline O'Shaughnessy
Rowena Burch	Tom Lawrence
Berwin Turlach	Nelson Chua
Queensland	Xuan Liang
Dimitrios Vagenas	Anton Westveld
Adrian Barnett	Linh Nghiem
Lee Jones	Michael Martin
Xing Lee	Gwenda Thompson
Megan Steele	Belinda Baker
Rachel King	Peter Caley
Natalie Scott	Brenda Vo
Farzana Jahan
Miranda Mortlock
Peter Baker