JEROME FRIEDMAN, professor of statistics and staff member at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is winner of the 2004 Parzen Prize, established by Emanuel and Carol Parzen to "record the contemporary history of statistical innovation." Friedman has created many new statistical methods used widely today in exploratory data analysis -- searching for patterns in unstructured data -- and in "machine learning" -- teaching computers to make decisions in problems where humans excel. His work has been applied in fields ranging from computer vision to medical diagnosis to financial portfolio management. He will receive the award March 1 at Texas A&M University.

FIORENZA MICHELI, assistant professor of biological sciences at the Hopkins Marine Station, and JONATHAN KOOMEY, a visiting professor in the schools of Engineering and Earth Sciences, are among 20 outstanding academic environmental scientists from throughout the United States and Guam selected as Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellows for 2004. The fellowship provides intensive communications and leadership training to help scientists communicate effectively with nonscientific audiences. The program is named for a renowned environmental scientist whose writings, including his 1949 book A Sand County Almanac, are credited with infusing the then-emerging conservation movement with good science and a stewardship ethic.