UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Ephraim Hanks, associate professor of statistics at Penn State, was honored with the 2024 Abdel El-Shaarawi Early Investigator Award by the International Environmetrics Society.

The award acknowledges and honors early investigators who have demonstrated exceptional contributions to the development of statistical and quantitative approaches in environmental sciences.

Hanks was selected as the recipient for his “outstanding contributions to environmental statistics, especially in the field of ecology; for key methodological developments in spatial and spatio-temporal statistics; for strong interdisciplinary work especially in modelling animal movement; for extensive and continued support to the field of environmental statistics,” according to the society.