The Classification Society congratulates Dr. Michael Pearce (Reed College) for winning the 2024 Distinguished Dissertation Award. Dr. Pearce received his Ph.D. from the Department of Statistics at the University of Washington in 2023. Dr. Pearce's dissertation titled, "Methods for the Statistical Analysis of Preferences, with Applications to Social Science Data" discusses an innovative methodology for combining partial rankings data and numeric ratings data and an extension for utilizing cluster analysis to incorporate heterogeneity into the model. Dr. Pearce will present in the annual Distinguished Dissertation Award session at the 2024 Classification Society Annual Meeting held June 18 - 21, 2024, at the University of British Columbia - Okanagan.

The Classification Society also congratulates Dr. Alexander Sharp and Dr. Jason Hou-Liu who were honourable mentions in the 2024 Distinguished Dissertation Award competition. Dr. Sharp received his Ph.D from the University of Waterloo in 2023, his thesis is titled, "Functional Finite Mixture Modelling and Estimation". Dr. Hou-Liu also received his Ph.D from the University of Waterloo in 2023, his thesis is titled "Structured Mixture Models".