The Herbert Sichel Medal is awarded annually to the member (or members) of the Association who has (have) published the best statistical paper during the previous year. 

The following rules will govern the award in 2025:

1. Papers on theoretical or applied statistics are eligible.

2. Single- and co-authored papers in which at least one of the principal authors is a member of SASA who is a South African citizen or a South African resident with their primary place of residence and Work in South Africa will be considered.

3. The papers must have been published (either online or in hard copy) in 2024.

4. Papers appearing in refereed journals, in fully refereed conference proceedings or as refereed chapters in books are eligible (books, theses or dissertations are not).

Nominations for the award may be made by a member of SASA (who is not an author) or submissions may be made by the author(s). An individual may only submit one paper for the award.

1. In evaluating the papers for the medal, the panel will use the following set of criteria:

• The impact of the paper in its specific field

• How innovative are the ideas or techniques used in the paper

• The relevance of the problem being addressed

• How well-written is the paper

2. The decision by SASA on the award of the medal will be final. The membership of the panel is still to be finalised. Any member of the panel who is themselves a nominee will be replaced by someone not nominated for the medal.

3. All nominations must be made via email to sichel.medal@sastat.org by 30 September 2025.

2024:  L Steyn, T de Wet, B  de Beats and  S Luca

A Nearest Neighbor Open-Set Classifier based on Excesses of Distance Ratios., Volume 32, Issue 1 of the Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics in 2023.

2023:  S Lee, SG Meintanis & C Pretorius

Monitoring procedures for strict stationarity based on the multivariate characteristic function, Journal of Multivariate Analysis, 189(C).

2022:  I MacDonald & E Pienaar

Fitting a reversible Markov chain by maximum likelihood: Converting an awkwardly constrained optimization problem to an unconstrained one, Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications,  561.

2021:  S Buitendag, J Beirlant & T de Wet

Confidence intervals for extreme Pareto‐type quantiles, Scandinavian Journal of Statistics, 47(1).

2020:  DA Burger, R Schall, R Jacobs & D-G Chen

A generalized Bayesian nonlinear mixed‐effects regression model for zero‐inflated longitudinal count data in tuberculosis trials, Pharmaceutical Statistics, 18(4).

2019: C Pretorius & JWH Swanepoel

On the asymptotic theory of new bootstrap confidence bounds, The Annals of Statistics, 46(1).

2018:  A Smit, A Kijko & A Stein

Probabilistic tsunami hazard assessment from incomplete and uncertain historical catalogues with application to tsunamigenic regions in the Pacific Ocean, Pure and Applied Geophysics, 174(8)

2017:   L Haines

2016:  PJ de Jongh, T de Wet, H Raubenheimer & H Venter

2015:  MS Finkelstein & J Vaupel

2014:  MM Varughese & EAD Pienaar

2013:  F Lombard & CJ Potgieter

2012:  I MacDonald, W Zuchinni & R Langrock

2011:   AJ van der Merwe & D Chikobvu

2010:   M Varughese

2009:  LK Debusho & LM Haines

2008:  IL MacDonald & W Zucchini

2007:  MS Finkelstein & V Esaulova

2006:  F Lombard

2005:  PJ de Jongh & JH Venter

2004:  MS Finkelstein

2003:  JWH Swanepoel & FC van Graan

2002:  JWH Swanepoel

2000:  CF de Beer & JWH Swanepoel

1999:  JS Maritz & CJ Lombard

1998:  F Lombard

1997:  JH Venter & SJ Steel