Fanny Dupont and Rachel Lobay have been awarded the 2024-2025 Rick White Award.

The Rick White Award was established in 2017 to recognize undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in a statistics program who demonstrate excellence in statistical science through collaboration with investigators in another discipline on a substantial application.

Fanny Dupont is supervised by Professor Marie Auger-Methe and has collaborated extensively with ecologists. She is part of a CANSSI collaborative research team that brings together researchers across the fields of statistics, ecology, and medicine to develop statistical models, specifically hidden Markov Models (HMMs), for biologging data. Fanny is the lead author of a paper published in Methods in Ecology & Evolution and has given workshops on hidden Markov models.

Rachel Lobay is supervised by Professor Daniel McDonald and has been working with Delphi Research Group to develop the theory and practice of epidemic detection, tracking, and forecasting. Her contributions include a lead-authored paper in Epidemics and work on two R packages, epiprocess and epipredict. She also co-instructed a workshop on "Epidemic Modelling and Forecasting." 

Congratulations to you both! 

UBC Statistics is proud to announce that Sarah Chan and Lianjie (Marc) Shi have been awarded a prestigious Dr. John and Barbara Petkau scholarship, recognizing their outstanding academic achievements and dedication.

In 2016, John and Barbara Petkau endowed two scholarships to recognize the academic merit of the next generation of statisticians and the impact these statisticians will have on solving world problems. One scholarship is for a student entering third year, and the other is for a student entering fourth year.

Third-year student Sarah Chan is in the combined major computer science and statistics specialization. She has consistently earned high grades in her core courses and is already tackling fourth-year material!

Lianjie (Marc) Shi is a fourth-year double major in psychology and statistics with an outstanding academic record, earning A+ in all of his statistics courses and nearly all of his mathematics courses. He is a two-time Dean’s Scholar honoree (2023, 2024) and recipient of several scholarships, including the Work Learn International Undergraduate Research Award (WLIURA) and the Faculty of Arts International Student Scholarship. Since 2024, Marc has been a research assistant in UBC’s Psychometric Lab (SEM Lab), where he completed an independent project on CFA models for Likert scales and developed an R Shiny application to assess multi-group measurement invariance.

Congratulations Sarah and Lianjie!

John Petkau, a professor emeritus in the department, has contributed in many ways to the department and the discipline with his vision and leadership, statistical expertise, generosity of time, and mentoring of undergraduate and graduate students. John’s wife, Barbara, deserves special thanks for generously sharing John's time with us.

See a list of previous recipients of the scholarships here.
 

We are thrilled to announce that Dr. Saifuddin Syed will be joining the UBC Statistics Department as an Assistant Professor on September 1, 2025. Dr. Syed will be primarily focusing on the AIM-SI cluster, bringing his exceptional expertise to our faculty.

Saifuddin is no stranger to UBC, having completed both his M.Sc. in Mathematics and Ph.D. in Statistics here. Following his doctoral studies, he held prestigious postdoctoral and research staff positions at the University of Oxford, further solidifying his impressive academic background.

His research is at the forefront of statistical innovation, centering on the development of robust and scalable algorithms for statistical inference and generative modeling. Dr. Syed’s work has a strong emphasis on scientific applications, making his contributions invaluable to a wide array of fields.

Saifuddin’s outstanding contributions to the field have been recognized with numerous accolades, including the Pierre Robillard Award, the Cecil Graham Doctoral Dissertation Award, and an Honourable Mention for the Savage Award in Bayesian theory and methods. These national and international honours highlight his significant impact and the high regard in which his work is held within the statistical community.

We eagerly anticipate Dr. Syed’s arrival and the profound impact his research, teaching, and mentorship will have on our department and students. Please join us in extending a warm welcome to Saif!

The School of Mathematics and Statistics at Yunnan University hosted the Symposium on Foundations for Statistical Science on July 25–26, 2025, in Kunming, China, to honour the remarkable career of Professor Jiahua Chen on the occasion of his 65th birthday.

Professor Chen, who was a former guest professor at Yunnan University, was celebrated for his profound contributions to statistical science. The symposium brought together leading researchers and scholars from around the world to explore foundational topics in statistics.

The scientific program featured keynote and invited talks covering a wide range of topics on foundations for statistical science, including areas for which Professor Chen has made fundamental research contributions, such as finite mixture models, Bayesian information theory, experimental design, and survey sampling.

The conference was also an appreciation of Professor Chen’s service to the statistics profession, including the roles of Editor-in-Chief of The Canadian Journal of Statistics and the 2005 President of the International Chinese Statistical Association (ICSA).

UBC Statistics welcomes Charles Margossian as an Assistant Professor, beginning August 1, 2025.

Charles received his Ph.D. in Statistics from Columbia University in 2022 and brings three years of research experience as a Research Fellow at the Flatiron Institute. His research broadly focuses on Bayesian modeling and probabilistic machine learning. This work bridges theory, computation, and application through the development of probabilistic programming languages, such as Stan.

Charles has published extensively in the areas of Bayesian computation and analysis, demonstrating both depth and breadth in his scholarship. He has also had fruitful collaborations in the sciences and has published in the areas of medicine, public health, and astrophysics. In addition to his research contributions, he brings teaching experience, particularly in short-course format, and has taught tutorials at a dozen conferences and summer schools. He is also a driving force behind several open-source software packages, underscoring his commitment to building accessible and impactful tools for the broader statistical and data science community.

In a statement published on Charles' website, he shared, "It is a considerable honour to receive a professorship at UBC, and it is a position I approach with optimism, awe, and gravity."

Welcome to UBC, Charles!

UBC Statistics extends a warm welcome to Grace Tompkins who joins our department as an Assistant Professor of Teaching! 

Grace comes to us with an impressive background, having earned her Ph.D. in Statistics with a specialization in Biostatistics from the University of Waterloo in 2025. She's not just an expert in her field; she brings valuable experience in teaching assistant (TA) training, along with a strong commitment to mentorship and community building.

Her research interests are fascinating, focusing on irregular longitudinal data and causal inference, particularly weighting methods to account for biases. During her graduate studies, Grace was a graduate consultant at the Statistical Consulting and Collaborative Research Unit and an active member of the Health Data Science Lab at the University of Waterloo. This diverse experience means she's perfectly poised to teach both traditional statistical methodologies and emerging topics in data science. 

Grace is incredibly enthusiastic about her new role at UBC. She shared:

"I feel so grateful to be in a position where I can positively impact statistics and data science education. I look forward to connecting with undergraduate and graduate students, and making statistical education more fun and accessible at UBC with my unique approach to teaching!"

We are excited to see the positive impact she'll have on our students and the broader community.

We’re thrilled to share that the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC) has named Assistant Professor of Teaching Katie Burak as the recipient of this year’s New Investigator Presentation Award.

The New Investigator Presentation Award is presented annually by the SSC to recognize outstanding contributed talks, judged on the quality of both the presentation and the underlying research. Katie received the award for her talk titled “Authentic Data Science Assessments in a Computer-Based Testing Environment.”

To learn more about the SSC New Investigator Presentation Award, please visit: https://ssc.ca/en/ssc-awards

Congratulations, Katie, on this well-deserved recognition!

In a recent announcement on the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC)'s website, our Statistics Associate Professor of Teaching, Melissa Lee, was awarded the SSC Early Career Educator Award for 2025. This award recognizes excellence in teaching statistics by early career SSC members, through commitment to evidence-based pedagogy and in contributions to statistical education in Canada. Such excellence may be demonstrated through contributions to the scholarship of teaching and learning, attention to accessibility and inclusivity of learning environments, or innovation in development and/or implementation of new courses, curricula or programs.

Melissa has received this award “for her leadership role in curriculum development and in resource development and assessment; for her curiosity and creativity in exploring new pedagogical methods; for her mentoring and support of the teaching of both faculty and teaching assistants; and for her ability to create a respectful, effective, and enjoyable teaching and learning environment for all.”

We’re grateful for Melissa’s dedication to teaching and proud of her accomplishments.

Congratulations, Melissa!

Read about Melissa’s full teaching contributions: https://ssc.ca/en/awards/2025/melissa-lee-ssc-early-career-educator-award-2025-0

To learn more about the SSC Early Career Educator Award, visit: https://ssc.ca/en/award/ssc-early-career-educator-award

The Nash Medal in Statistics is given each year to the most outstanding graduating student in the B.Sc. program in Statistics. The medal recognizes the great service to Statistics given by Professor Stanley Nash (1915-2001) over his more than 40 years at UBC.

The Nash Medal in Statistics for the 2024-2025 academic year is awarded to Chenyue Qian, who graduates with a BSc Major in Statistics. Chenyue's grades in upper-level Statistics and Math courses are consistently in the high 90s or even 100%; across all subjects, he achieved an extraordinary average of 93%, and often higher, in every session of study at UBC. Chenyue won two Petkau scholarships, one in 2023 as a fourth-year student and another in 2022 upon entering his third year, further reflecting his academic excellence. He will pursue a Master's in Statistics next. 

The Nash Medal is supported by the Statistics Fund for Excellence.

Learn more about the Medal (https://www.stat.ubc.ca/nash-medal) and the Fund (https://www.stat.ubc.ca/statistics-fund-excellence).

The 42nd Greater Vancouver Regional Science Fair (GVRSF), hosted at the University of British Columbia, featured 250 projects spanning life, environmental, and physical sciences. Over 400 students from grades 7-12 showcased their research. On April 11th, participants also had the opportunity to tour UBC’s science labs, sparking further interest in pursuing careers in science.

The Department of Statistics sponsored the UBC Statistics Award, recognizing exceptional use of statistical methods. This year’s winners included Michael Skrypnyk (Prince of Wales Secondary), Ziling Zhang (Crofton House), and Elaine Lyu (Collingwood School).

Support from UBC's faculties and research centres made the event a success, inspiring the next generation of scientists.

For more information about the GVRSF, visit: https://gvrsf.ca/

To view the list of 2025 award winners, visit: https://gvrsf.ca/2025/04/21/2025-award-winners/