Professor Timo Teräsvirta receives distinguished science award

22 May 2012

This year, Aarhus University is awarding the Rigmor and Carl Holst-Knudsen Award for Scientific Research to Professor Timo Teräsvirta on the basis of his research expertise and background. In the recommendation, Timo Teräsvirta is described as an outstanding example of how research across existing academic boundaries can facilitate cooperation, synergies and new knowledge. The award comes with a prize of DKK 100,000.

Research area
Professor Timo Teräsvirta is an econometrist and a leading international figure, especially within non-linear modelling of economic and financial time series data.

His work is used for testing economic theories, for analysing economic policies and for preparing empirically based tools for use in public and private enterprises. Time series are characterised through observations of variables measured over time, for example GDP, interest rate series, share prices and unemployment data.

Why the interest in econometrics?
From an early age, Timo Teräsvirta knew that he was going to go to university. His father was an architect and his mother was a teacher, so it was on the cards that he should continue studying after he left school. He was and always has been interested in figures, so mathematics and statistics was a natural place to start. The fact that he landed up working with econometrics results from a long string of coincidences.

? If you had asked me 30 years ago, I might have said something else, but I have worked within this field for so many years that I can’t see myself doing anything else, says Timo Teräsvirta, who still greatly enjoys his work and finds fresh challenges daily.

Background
Timo Teräsvirta holds an M.Pol.Sc. (Statistics) degree from Helsinki University, from where he graduated in 1964. In 1968, he was awarded a Lic.Pol.Sc. (Statistics) degree, also at Helsinki University, and in 1970 he was made a D.Pol.Sc. (Econometrics). During his career he has been employed at universities in, for example, Sweden, California and Australia. From 2002-2010, he was a nominating committee member for the Sveriges Riksbanks Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.

Further information:

The awards ceremony is taking place on Friday 25 May in the Main Hall.

About the Rigmor and Carl Holst-Knudsen’s Award for Scientific Research
The Rigmor and Carl Holst-Knudsen’s Award for Scientific Research was established on 28 May 1956 on the occasion of the barrister Carl Holst-Knudsen’s 70^th birthday, when he stepped down as chairman of the board of the then self-governing Aarhus University. The award was given for the first time in 1958, since when – in so far as possible – it has been awarded on 28 May every year. The award, which was originally DKK 10,000, was raised in 2010 to DKK 100,000.

The award is given without application as a mark of respect to a Danish researcher who is primarily working or has worked at Aarhus University, and who is involved in scientific work and as a result has produced one or more significant results which hold promise for future research. A person may only receive the award once.

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