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.
2012 Stanley W. Nash Medal Recipient- Ken Lau
The Awards Committee is delighted to announce that Ken Lau is the 2013 winner of the Nash Medal.
The Nash Medal is given to the most outstanding graduating student in the B.Sc. program in Statistics. The Medal honours Prof Stanley Nash (1915-2001), recognizing his service to statistics over his more than forty years at UBC. You can read more about Professor Nash and see the list of past recipients of the Medal at
/Department/Nash.php
Lorraine Schwartz prize winner for 2012 announced
The Department of Mathematics and the Department of Statistics are pleased to announce that the recipient of the 2013 Lorraine Schwartz Prize is Roland Bauerschmidt, PhD student in Mathematics.
New course: STAT 300: Intermediate Statistics for Applications
Vincenzo Coia receives Governer General's Gold Medal
Congratulations Vincenzo! Vincenzo Coia, currently a PhD student in the Department, received the Governor General's Gold Medal at Brock University for his outstanding record in this Master's program in Mathematics and Statistics. His Master's thesis, supervised by Prof. Mei Ling Huang,focused on extreme value theory and its applications in learning about extreme environmen- tal events, such as floods and hurricanes.