Small Area Estimation (SAE) Award Committee selected Partha Lahiri for the 2020 SAE Award. Since SAE2020 was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2020 SAE Award was given to him in the award ceremony of the SAE2021 conference held virtually from Naples, Italy, during September 20-24, 2021. The SAE2021 conference was designated as the Satellite Conference of the 63rd International Statistical Institute (ISI) World Statistics Congress (WSC).
The award started in SAE2017, which was held in Paris, France, and was a satellite conference of the 61st ISI WSC. "The Award is in recognition of an individual who has made outstanding contribution to the research, application, and education of small area estimation (SAE). The selection of the winner is worldwide." (sae2020.org).
Here is the complete list of SAE Award winners to date:
2017 (Paris, France): J.N.K. Rao, Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus, Carleton University, Canada
2018 (Shanghai, China) Danny Pfeffermann, National Statistician and CBS Director, Israel and Professor, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
2019 (Singapore) Malay Ghosh, Distinguished Professor, University of Florida, USA
2020 (Naples, Italy): Partha Lahiri (https://www.math.umd.edu/~plahiri/), Professor, STAT Program (https://stat.umd.edu/), Department of Mathematics (https://www-math.umd.edu/) and Joint Program in Survey Methodology (https://jpsm.umd.edu/)
2021 (Naples) SAE Award: Wayne Fuller, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Iowa State University.