Zdravko Botev is the pioneer of several modern statistical methodologies, including the diffusion kernel density estimator, the generalized splitting method for rare-event simulation, the bandwidth perturbation matching method, the regenerative rejection sampling method, and the klimax method for feature selection. His contributions to computational statistics and data science have been recognized with honours such as the Christopher Heyde Medal from the Australian Academy of Science and the Gavin Brown Prize from the Australian Mathematical Society.