Berger was president of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics from 1995-1996, chair of the Section on Bayesian Statistical Science of the American Statistical Association in 1995, and president of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis during 2004. He has been involved with numerous editorial activities, including co-editorship of the Annals of Statistics during the period 1998-2000.

Berger is a Fellow of the ASA and the IMS and has received Guggenheim and Sloan Fellowships. He received the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies ‘President's Award’ in 1985, and the Sigma Xi Research Award at Purdue University for contribution of the year to science in 1993. He was the COPSS Fisher Lecturer in 2001 and the Wald Lecturer of the IMS in 2007. He was elected as a foreign member of the Spanish Real Academia de Ciencias in 2002, elected to the USA National Academy of Sciences in 2003, awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Purdue University in 2004, and was named an Honorary Professor at East China Normal University in 2011.

Berger has directed 32 Ph.D. students, written or edited fifteen books, and published over 175 papers. His research has primarily been in Bayesian statistics, foundations of statistics, statistical decision theory, simulation, model selection, and various interdisciplinary areas of science and industry, especially astronomy and the interface between computer modeling and statistics.