J.N.K. Rao is a Distinguished Research Professor at Carleton University, Ottawa. He is a leading authority in survey sampling theory and methods and empirical likelihood methods for survey data. In recent years, his research focused on small area estimation (SAE), a topic of great practical interest due to growing demand for
reliable local area statistics. His two Wiley books on this topic published in 2003 and 2015 are regarded as standard references on this topic and highly cited. In recognition of his pioneering contributions to this topic, he received the first Award for outstanding contributions to SAE at an international conference on SAE in Paris, 2017. He is also known for his pioneering 1968 paper on scale-load approach to non-parametric inference from survey data and 20 years later rediscovered as empirical likelihood. This topic has received much attention in recent years due to its ability to provide reliable nonparametric confidence intervals similar to likelihood ratio intervals in the parametric framework. In recognition of his outstanding contributions to survey sampling and other areas, Rao received many prestigious honours and awards: Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (1991), American Statistical Association (1964) and Institute of Mathematical Statistics (1972). He received the Gold Medal from the Statistical Society of Canada (1993) and the Waksberg Award (2005).