Constance van Eeden Invited Speaker Professor Gavin Shaddick's lecture now available on Mathtube
Camila Casquilho Resende awarded Wendy Fan Memorial Scholarship
Camila Casquilho Resende, PhD student, has been awarded the Wendy Fan Memorial Scholarship. This scholarship has been endowed in memory of Wendy Fan. The award is offered to a student who began graduate study in Science, Applied Science, Medicine or Commerce and Business Administration and who has received his or her undergraduate degree at an institution outside of North America. The award is made on the recommendation of the Faculty of Graduate Studies.
Professor Jiahua Chen Receives UBC Killam Research Fellowship
Constance van Eeden Invited Speaker Professor Miguel Hernan's lecture now available on Mathtube
The graduate students of the Statistics Department, with the support of the Constance van Eeden Fund, were honoured to host Dr Miguel Hernan for an invited talk on 28 February 2013. Thanks to the graduate students for their hard work, to Constance for her support, and to PIMS for filming the lecture and posting it on their website.
Dr. Gabriela Cohen-Freue, CRC in Statistical Genomics
Judge’s failure to understand probability causes overturn of acquittal of Amanda Knox
From the New York Times March 26 2013
"Italy’s highest court on Tuesday overturned the acquittal of Amanda Knox, accused of the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old British woman who was Knox’s roommate in Perugia, Italy, at the time."
The judge seemed to misunderstand basic probability principals involved in DNA testing. Perhaps STAT 302 should be required of all judges!
See the article for further details.
Skylight Development Grant awarded to Stat dept. members
Jenny Bryan, Rick White, and Davor Cubranic were awarded a Skylight Development Grant http://www.skylight.science.ubc.ca/devgrants from the Office of the Dean of Science. They will use the funds to assemble a "toolkit" for managing and delivering of data analytic course material.
Luke Bornn - Faculty of Science Graduate Prize
Luke Bornn, who recently received his PhD from our department, is this year's recipient of the Faculty of Science Graduate Prize, given to the graduating Doctoral student who is deemed best in the graduating class in the Faculty of Science. The recipient of this award is the Faculty of Science's nominee for the UBC Governor General's Gold Medal - winner to be announced during graduation.
Peggy Ng wins Faculty of Science Achievement Award
Peggy Ng has received a Faculty of Science Achievement Award. These awards recognize exceptional contributions of faculty, staff and students. She will receive her award at a reception on May 14, following the usually short end of year Faculty of Science meeting (meeting starts at 2:30), St John's College.
UBC Statistics Alum Luke Bornn wins Pierre Robillard Award
Luke Bornn, former PhD student, has received the Pierre Robillard Award, given annually by the Statistical Society of Canada to recognize the best PhD thesis in probability or statistics defended at a Canadian university during the previous year. Luke's thesis, entitled 'Modeling Latent Correlation Structures with Application to Agricultural and Environmental Science' was co-supervised by Jim Zidek and Arnaud Doucet.
Luke is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics at Harvard University.