International recognition for statistics lecturer
University of Southern Queensland (USQ) maths and computing Associate Professor, Dr Shahjahan Khan, became the first Australian statistician to receive a prestigious Gold Medal from the Islamic Countries Society of Statistical Sciences (ISOSS), during the 9th ISOSS conference in Malaysia last month.
Co-hosted by the Institute of Statistics Malaysia (ISM) and organised by Professor Khan, the conference attracted more than 350 professional Statisticians from around the world, including Australia, Canada, UK, USA, Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Dr Khan said he was delighted to receive the award for his outstanding research and leading contribution to the development of statistics and services to ISOSS. He believes that the award has put statistics at USQ on the map.
'It's a prestigious award and, I am proud to be the first Australian statistician to receive this award,' Professor Khan said.
Founding President of ISOSS, Professor Munir Ahmad, Professor Ali S Hadi (USA/Egypt) and Professor Hanif Mian (Pakistan) also received a gold medal award.
Professor Khan said one of the key features of the biannual conference was breaking down cultural and religious barriers for development of statistical sciences.
'We are living in a world divided by religion and we need to come and work together as professionals, so encouraging collaboration was a primary focus of the conference,' Professor Khan said.
'In achieving this objective, I invited keynote speakers from western countries and assigned reputed scholars to run twelve invited sessions, on top of 240 presenters.'
Professor Khan also organised for a representative from the International Statistical Institute (ISI) to attend the conference. Based in Netherland, ISI is the largest statistics organisation in the world and this was the first time an official representative attended an ISOSS conference.
'Working with the ISI is a milestone and will enable us to collaborate professionally and improve the quality of research and statistics in the OIC countries.'
Reports on the conference and the Gold Medal recipients were covered in The Asia Post and the Naya Diganta newspapers in Bangladesh.
Professor Khan graduated with an MSc from Jahangirnager University in Bangladesh, before completing his PhD at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. He has published 52 journal articles and presented over 30 keynote and invited talks. He is an elected member of the ISI and an elected fellow of the Royals Statistical Society (RSS), UK. He is the Chief Editor of USA based Journal of Applied Probability and Statistics (JAPS). He joined USQ as a lecturer in 1993.
Media Contact: Amy Cass, USQ Media, +61 7 4631 2092 or +61 412 097 326