News

The Nash Medal in Statistics was awarded this academic year to Sherry (Yu) Zhang. Sherry graduated this May with stellar grades in the challenging program of a combined honours in Statistics and Computer Science. Her instructors commented on her enthusiasm for her courses, her engagement with her learning and her deep understanding of the material. She has even been known to teach an instructor a thing or two, by noting some very subtle errors. In the fall, Sherry will begin the MS Financial Engineering program at Columbia University.

Congratulation to Joe Watson, the recipient of the Rick White Award for the UBC academic year 2020.

After rigorous review and refinement, it’s official: UBC Vancouver is proud to announce a new minor in Data Science. The new program will launch in September 2021 with its first cohort of students.

Data science is becoming essential across multiple domains. Fields like manufacturing, education, marketing, psychology, and health are all requiring data science expertise at unprecedented levels. Students who complete the minor will be able to offer employers a robust ability to wrangle, organize, summarize, and visualize their ever-increasing stores of data.

We’re delighted to announce that our Professor Emeritus James (Jim) Zidek is the inaugural recipient of the UBC Emeritus College Award for Excellence in Innovative and Creative Endeavors. This new award honours UBC’s emeriti “who have demonstrated excellence in their engagement in innovative research, artistic creation, or new applications of previous research since attaining Emeritus status.”

Next week is the Statistical Society of Canada’s 2021 Annual Meeting.

Kicking off the week of scientific talks and social events, the SSC program includes a UBC Statistics (Vancouver) virtual mixer on Monday, June 7 from 9:30am to 10:30am PDT.

If you’re a current or former member of the department and you’ve already signed up for next week’s annual meeting, you’re encouraged to attend!

We’re delighted to announce two winners of the department’s 2020 Marshall Prize. This year, the Marshall Prize co-winners are PhD students Anthony Christidis and Saifuddin (Saif) Syed.

In honour of our Professor Emeritus Albert Marshall, the Marshall Prize is awarded annually to a statistics graduate student who has achieved great distinction according to the professional and academic criteria by which members of our discipline are judged.

We’re thrilled to congratulate our Professor of Teaching, Bruce Dunham, for receiving the 2021 PIMS Education Prize.

We’re excited to announce that our Professor Ruben Zamar has been named as a Fellow in the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMS). Ruben is one of only 41 recipients from around the world who were honoured with this prestigious award this year.

We are pleased to honour Anthony-Alexander Christidis, Gian Carlo Di-Luvi, and Archer Gong Zhang with Statistics Graduate Teaching Assistant Awards. We know that many department members contribute to our teaching mission, and we want to take the opportunity to not only honour these three, but to thank everyone.

Thank you to all of our dedicated teaching assistants and others who enthusiastically support our teaching mission. And congratulations to Anthony, Gian Carlo, and Archer!

Congratulations to our professors Gabriela Cohen Freue and Will Welch, who have each received a Collaborative Research Team (CRT) award from the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute (CANSSI). These awards will fund CRT projects that involve collaborators across Canada.