DAVIS - A statistician has won the most prestigious teaching award at the University of California, Davis, officials announced this week.

Francisco J. Samaniego won the $30,000 UC Davis Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement, which honors faculty members who combine outstanding research with teaching. Campus officials believe the prize, funded by the UC Davis Foundation, is the largest of its kind in the nation.

"He is internationally recognized for his research on statistics, and he combines his scholarly excellence with a creative and dedicated approach to teaching," Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef said in a statement.

Samaniego, who joined the Davis faculty in 1972, teaches a range of statistics classes, including a required introductory course.

His research focuses on reliability theory, used in disciplines such as engineering, to study how systems perform over time. He also does research in a statistical method that allows for some intuition to be used in analysis of experimental data.

Samaniego currently serves as an editor of Journal of American Statistical Association, a top scholarly journal in the field.