News

We are delighted to announce that Xiucai Ding, Associate Professor of Statistics, has been awarded the 2026 College of Letters and Science Teaching Award (Mathematical and Physical Sciences Division)!  This award aims to recognize outstanding teaching of all kinds: at the undergraduate and graduate level, inside and outside the classroom. The award will be presented to Prof. Ding at a special ceremony on June 8th, 2026. 

Please apply by Thursday May 21, 2026 (11:59pm PST)

The Department of Statistics at the University of California, Davis, seeks temporary instructors to teach courses in Statistics and Data Science at the lower division, upper division or graduate level in the 2026-2027 academic year.

Statistics Professor and Data Science Director Alexander Aue has been featured in the current edition of the UC Davis Letters & Science Magazine in an article title "From the Field to the Classroom: Soccer Analytics and Data Science". The article highlights the First Year Seminar class he has been teaching called "Soccer Analytics". You can read the story written by Greg Watry at:

With great sadness the Department of Statistics announces the passing of Professor Emeritus Robert H. Shumway, who passed away on Tuesday, May 13. Professor Shumway, affectionately known as Bob, was one of the first faculty members of our Department, joining in 1980 from George Washington University. He received his Ph.D. under the supervision of Professor Solomon Kullback from George Washington University in 1965. Bob was a leading researcher in time series who did pioneering work on state space modeling, the EM algorithm and missing data, among others.

We are delighted to share the news that Professor Alexander Aue has been newly elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Professor Aue was elected for "distinguished contributions to the field of time series and change-point analysis, in particular for complex models, such as functional and high-dimensional data". 

The College of Letters and Science Magazine has published an article (written by Greg Watry) with an interview with Statistics Professor Fushing Hsieh after he gave a talk at the Science Café titled "Statistical Analysis is Unscientific". You can read more about the article on the L&S Magazine site here: 

"Fushing Hsieh Serves Up Statistics at Davis Science Café"

Assistant Professor of Statistics Xiao Hui Tai is currently featured in an article in the College of Letters and Science Magazine titled "How Statistics Informs Social Science Research". You can read the article written by Greg Watry at: https://lettersandsciencemag.ucdavis.edu/self-society/how-statistics-informs-social-science-research-xiao-hui-tai

We are very pleased to announce that Professor and Department Chair Jiming Jiang has received the 2023-2024 SAE Award (full name: Award for Outstanding Contribution to Small Area Estimation). Professor Jiang received the award during the SAE 2023-2024: Small Area Estimation & Data Science, A Conference Celebrating the 65th Birthday of Prof. Partha Lahiri, which was held on June 3-7 in Lima, Peru .

It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our former IT Systems Administrator Larry Tai, who died in March 2024. Larry was one of the founding staff members of the our department, when we were born as the Intercollegiate Division of Statistics in 1979. He retired in 2012 and was succeeded by Nehad Ismail. Larry was a much loved presence in the department and those of us who worked with him have fond memories. Our former chair Rudy Beran remembered Larry from the pioneering days of IT in the department: