Given by the university’s Department of Biostatistics, the award recognizes outstanding career achievement by a woman in the statistical sciences. Dr. Mukherjee present a lecture on Tuesday, September 21st and receive an honorarium. Due to COVID-19 the lecture will held via Zoom.

In 2002, UAB said each recipient of the Janet L. Norwood Award is to be an internationally recognized statistician. In giving the award, UAB’s Department of Biostatistics said it wishes to “recognize the contribution of all women to the statistical sciences.” It added, “Women have been traditionally underrepresented in many fields of science, with the degree of under-representation greater for the quantitative sciences. This denies the field the benefit of the great contributions women are obviously capable of making to the statistical sciences. Establishing this award will help promote the active involvement of women in the statistical sciences at all levels from high school through senior faculty and scientists.”

Norwood was the first woman commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and is past-president of the American Statistical Association. She served as presidential appointment to the Chair of the Advisory Council on Unemployment Compensation from 1993-96, under then President Bill Clinton. From 1979 through 1991, she was the U.S. Commissioner of Labor Statistics, responsible for the Bureau of Labor Statistics and its work in compilation, publication, and interpretation of statistics on employment and unemployment, prices, compensation, industrial relations, productivity, and economic growth. Norwood received a Distinguished rank in the Senior Executive Service from President Ronald Reagan.

Mukherjee joined the University of Michigan in 2006. She previously served as a Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Florida. She has been a visiting scholar to numerous institutions, including the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata, India; Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute in Barcelona, Spain; and Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand.

Mukherjee also served on the Board of Trustees for the National Institute of Statistical Sciences, chaired the Committee of President of Statistical Societies, and is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as a member of the International Statistical Institute. She founded the COVIND-19 study group to model COVID-19 transmission in India. She has been honored with the Gertrude Cox Award (2016) and the L. Adrienne Cupples Award (2020).

Mukherjee holds a bachelor’s degree in statistics from Presidency College, master’s degrees in applied statistics and data analysis (Indian Statistical Institute) and mathematical statistics (Purdue University), and a doctoral degree in statistics from the Purdue University.