News

Beginning in September, the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute (CANSSI) will be hosting a series of monthly virtual seminars, to be broadcast live on the fourth Thursday of the month. The series will span from September to April. Each speaker will provide a read-ahead journal article, with CANSSI encouraging graduate-student journal clubs.

This fall, the theme is hidden Markov models.

The fall line-up

Mark your calendars for this fall’s three upcoming speakers!

This year’s recipients of the Dr. John and Barbara Petkau Scholarships are Xinpei Li and Huanqing (William) Wang.

Xinpei Li is entering third year in the double Honours program in Computer Science and Statistics. Xinpei has taken an impressive array of courses in both departments, all with stellar grades. Although entering third year, Xinpei is already within a few courses of being promoted to fourth year.

The Nash Medal in Statistics was awarded this year to Naitong Chen.

Naitong graduated with a major in Statistics in May 2020 with an exemplary transcript coupled with hands-on research experience. And the department is delighted that he is continuing his UBC training in the Statistics M.Sc. program.

The Department of Statistics offers several types of free statistical consultation, via STAT 551, SOS, and STAT 550, as follows.

Congratulations to our Statistics PhD student Joe Watson, who was awarded the Student Presentation Award at the virtual International Statistical Ecology Conference (ISEC) 2020!

ISEC is a biennial meeting of researchers who bridge ecology and statistics and was hosted this year by UNSW Sydney (the University of New South Wales).

Our professor and department head, Paul Gustafson, has received this year’s Statistical Society of Canada (SSC) Gold Medal.

The Gold Medal is the SSC’s most prestigious award for research. It is awarded to “a person who has made outstanding contributions to statistics, or to probability, either to mathematical developments or in applied work” (Statistical Society of Canada).

Hearty congratulations to you, Paul!

UBC Statistics PhD student Evan Sidrow won the Best Graduate Oral Presentation Award (Ph.D.) at the Eighth Annual Canadian Statistics Student Conference. This conference is usually held in-person just before the annual Statistical Society of Canada meeting, but this May, it was offered online. Evan’s presentation, Modelling Marine Mammal Sub-dive Behaviour with Hierarchical Hidden Markov Models, stems from joint work with Sarah Fortune and Andrew Trites of the Institute of Oceans and Fisheries, and Marie Auger-Méthé and Nancy Heckman.

Our department is thrilled to be welcoming five new faculty colleagues: Vincenzo Coia, Melissa Lee, Rodolfo Lourenzutti, Daniel McDonald, and Yongjin Park.

Rodolfo, Melissa, and Vincenzo will be taking up Assistant Professor of Teaching positions on July 1.

On the same date, Daniel will be joining us in an Associate Professor position.

And Yongjin will begin his role as an Assistant Professor in a joint position between the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and the Department of Statistics on September 1.

We’re very pleased to announce that our Statistics Senior Instructor, Eugenia Yu, has won a Killam Teaching Prize for excellence in teaching.

We have all become familiar with the importance of monitoring the number of COVID-19 cases for setting policies and managing limited health care resources. But how do inaccuracies in tests for the virus impact the curves that describe the epidemic?