The John van Ryzin Award presented by the Eastern North American Region (ENAR) of the International Biometric Society was established in memory of John van Ryzin, who was a world-renowned statistician and bio-statistician who died in 1987 at the age of 51. Dr. van Ryzin served on the faculty in the Department of Statistics at the University of Wisconsin until 1981, when he joined the Department of Statistics and the Division of Biostatistics at Columbia University. He served as Chairman of the Department of Statistics from 1985 until his untimely death, and he also served as a senior mathematician at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Dr. van Ryzin was a internationallly-recognized researcher in survival analysis, publishing numerous fundamental contributions to this important area. He was also an authority on the adverse effects of radiation and toxicity, and he served on numerous government panels and scientific advisory boards. The award was established following Dr. van Ryzin's untimely death, and is given annually by ENAR at its annual Spring Meeting to recognize the best paper submitted to the ENAR Distinguished Student Paper Award competition. (The award has become the most important recognition of graduate student achievement awarded in the biostatistics profession.)