Dear Friends of UF Statistics,
I wanted to take this chance to update you all on the current happenings within our department. Though the pandemic seems unending, we have successfully weathered it, thanks to the adaptability of both the students and the faculty.
I am happy to report that we welcomed two new faculty in Fall 2021 (Beth Johnson and Juhyung Lee) and will welcome another in Fall 2022 (Karl Oskar Ekvall). Short bios on each can be found in the newsletter.
Our faculty have received numerous honors. Distinguished Professor Malay Ghosh received an honorary degree from Katowice University in Poland. Assistant Professor Joey Antonelli received the Rosenblith New Investigator Award from the Health Effects Institute. And I was honored to receive the L. Adrienne Cupples Award from Boston University. You’ll read more about each honor in the following enclosed stories.
In addition, our graduate students have won numerous honors. In particular, Heejun Shin (supervised by Joey Antonelli) won the John van Ryzin Award from the Eastern North American Region of the International Biometric Society (see enclosed story).
The statistics major continues to grow. We currently have over 230 enrolled. Established in Fall 2020, the data science major is now up to 91 students. On top of this, we introduced a new data analytics certificate in summer 2022 that will provide essential data analytics training to social science, humanities and other majors.
Our recent alumni at the undergraduate level have accepted top positions at highly ranked graduate programs, including statistics PhD programs, Duke and North Carolina State and a biostatistics PhD program, University of Washington. Our recent alumni at the graduate level accepted positions spanning academia and industry, including Google, Bristol Meyers Squibb, the Food and Drug Administration, the University of Pennsylvania and Georgia Tech.
We have also introduced numerous graduate-level courses, including a two-semester computing sequence that includes optimization and (Markov chain) Monte Carlo methods and a follow-up to generalized linear models and advanced regression that introduces our students to statistical machine learning, among other topics.
We now also offer two new funding opportunities for our graduate students: the Jana F. Col Award and a Pfizer fellowship. The Jana F. Col Award was given to Natalie Burns, who will use the funds to present her research in the United Kingdom at the 15th International Conference on Computational and Methodological Statistics. The Pfizer fellowship was awarded to Steven Goodman. This award provides him an increased stipend and expanded opportunities for interactions with Pfizer (see enclosed story).
Please stay in touch and let us know the next time you are in Gainesville. Go Gators!
Best regards,
Mike Daniels
Professor, Chair and Andrew Banks Family Endowed Chair
View All Fall 2022 Newsletter Articles