News

The Rick White Award recognizes students who demonstrate excellence in statistical science through collaboration with investigators in another discipline on a substantial application. The award honours the memory of Rick White, who served the department and the university with his gifts in Applied Statistics.

Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) play a vital role in our department. Every year since 2011, we have recognized the excellent work of our GTAs through the Department of Statistics’ Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) Award.

The Nash Medal this year is awarded to Huaiwen Dong. Huaiwen has completed a major in Statistics and a minor in Arts, and she will graduate with distinction. Throughout her academic career, Huaiwen has received many honours and awards, including the Dr. John and Barbara Petkau Scholarship in Statistics. Huaiwen has also contributed greatly to the undergraduate student community through her involvement with the Undergraduate Statistics Society.

We are happy to announce that the winner of the 2019 Data Science Award is UBC Bioinformatics M.Sc. student Rebecca Asiimwe.

The Departmental Awards Committee is pleased to announce that the co-winners of the 2018 Marshall Prize are Eric Fu and Harlan Campbell. Their PhD supervisors are respectively Nancy Heckman and Paul Gustafson. Eric defended his PhD thesis in February and Harlan will be defending soon. Both have accomplished independent research in their theses with several published and/or submitted papers.

Professor Jim Zidek has been awarded the 2019 David Rees Distinguished Visiting Fellowship that enables mathematical scientists to visit the University of Exeter. The announcement for the Award states that “during the period of their visit at the University, David Rees Fellows will:

Statistics Associate Professor Alex Bouchard-Côté has just received the 2018 UBC/PIMS Mathematical Sciences Young Faculty Award.

In addition to receiving a monetary award, Alex will give a PIMS-UBC Distinguished Colloquium lecture in the fall. You can read PIMS's announcement, which includes some nice background information, here: https://www.pims.math.ca/news/alexandre-bouchard-c%C3%B4t%C3%A9-wins-2018-pims-ubc-young-faculty-award.

Congratulations, Alex!

The Department of Statistics is soliciting nominations for the Department of Statistics Award in Data Science, an award to recognize the importance of developing and applying tools to answer important questions through the analysis of data. This $1,000 award is offered to an undergraduate or graduate student who has demonstrated initiative and creativity in making outstanding contributions in the field of Data Science.

Assistant Professor Sara Mostafavi has been awarded a Canada CIFAR Artificial Intelligence (CCAI) Chair!

Our IT Director, Thé Ha (a.k.a. help@stat.ubc.ca!), is a 2018 recipient of a Faculty of Science Excellence in Service Award!