The Athens University of Economics and Business organized on Wednesday, May 17, 2023, at the Leonidas Zervas Amphitheater of the National Research Foundation, an honorary doctorate ceremony of the Department of Statistics of the School of Information Science and Technology. Professor of Cambridge University, Great Britain Sir David John Spiegelhalter.

The event began with speeches by the rector of the Athens University of Economics and Business, Professor Dimitrios Burandonis, and the President of the Department of Statistics, Professor Ioannis Ndzufra. This was followed by a presentation of the work of the Honored Associate Professor of the Department of Statistics, Mr. Nikolaos Demiri.

The announcement ceremony ended with a speech by the laureate on the topic: “Why the study of statistics and data science is so important for the future.”

Sir David John Spiegelhalter is Distinguished Professor of Statistics at the Center for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Churchill College at the same university.

He is chairman of the Winton Risk and Evidence Clearinghouse at the University of Cambridge, which aims to improve the way statistics are used in the medical sciences by lawyers and judiciaries, the media and politicians.

The professor has been dealing with the Covid crisis for a long time. He also presented the BBC4 documentary “Tails you Win: the Science of Chance” and the award-winning program “Climate Change by Numbers”.

His most requested books are The Art of Statistics, released in March 2019, and Covid by the Numbers, released in September 2021.

He was knighted (sir) in 2014 for services to medical statistics. He was President of the Royal Statistical Society (2017–2018) and Non-Executive Director of Statistics UK in 2020.