The Barnett Award is awarded annually to recognise outstanding contributions to the field of environmental statistics. Professor Finn Lindgren will receive the Royal Statistical Society Barnett Award 2026. This honour is in recognition of his strong and sustained contributions to environmental statistics through significant methodological advances and software development.The award references Finn's 2011 paper (with colleagues Rue and Lindström) in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B, which made it possible to fit flexible Gaussian process models to large spatial datasets, highlighting that this work has had particular impact on the statistical modelling of climate, ecology, and health. The Barnett Award and Lecture was established in 2015 in memory of environmental statistician, Professor Vic Barnett. The Barnett Award is just one of the RSS Honours which celebrate the dedicated work of RSS Fellows, ensuring their achievements are recognised across the field of statistics. Sir John Aston, RSS President, says, "Each year, our honours recognise the depth, diversity and real-world impact of statistics and data science. This year’s recipients have made exceptional contributions across theory, application and service to the profession. Their work demonstrates the vital role statistics plays in addressing some of the most important challenges facing society today."Finn will be presented with the award and deliver the Barnett Lecture at the RSS annual conference, which is taking place from 7th to 10th of September in Bournemouth. Learn more:The Barnett Award | Royal Statistical SocietyAn explicit link between Gaussian fields and Gaussian Markov random fields: the stochastic partial differential equation approach | Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B (Statistical Methodology) Tags Staff success Statistics Publication date 28 Apr, 2026
