Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award, University of California, Santa Barbara Sreenivasa Rao Jammalamadaka, also known as J.S.

Rao, is a statistician specializing in directional statistics, Goodness of fit tests, Spacings, and aspects of large sample efficiencies and inference.

Rao was educated for a year at the YRS and VRN College in Chirala, followed by the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata (B. Stat.1964, M.Stat.

He was instrumental in establishing the Department of Statistics and Applied Probability at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for which he served as its first Chairman.

Rao is the author of over 200 publications and has written 3 scholarly books and edited conference proceedings and other special volumes.