Jon Wellner, Professor Emeritus, received a B.S. in mathematics and physics from the University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho in 1968, and a Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1975. He was an Assistant Professor and Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, from 1975 to 1983. He joined the faculty at the UW in September 1983. He was on sabbatical leave at the Mathematics Institute of the University of Munich in 1980-1981 (supported by a fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation); his second sabbatical leave at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands in 1987-1988 was supported by a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation; his third sabbatical leave at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Delft University of Technology in 2004-2005 was supported by a grant from the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO) and Delft University. His fourth sabbatical leave at the University of Heidelberg was supported by a Humboldt Research Prize awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
Wellner's research interests include uses of large sample theory in statistics, theory of empirical processes, and efficient estimation for semiparametric models. He has served as a Co-Editor of the Annals of Statistics, and as President of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (2017). He has also served as IMS Editor of Statistics Surveys (2007-2009), and as Editor of Statistical Science (2011-2013).
In his free time, Wellner enjoys mountain climbing and backcountry skiing in the Cascades and British Columbia.