Latest News

Latest News

"From the Field to the Classroom: Soccer Analytics and Data Science" - Alex Aue

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:

In Memoriam: Robert Shumway

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.

Alexander Aue elected Fellow of the AAAS

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". 

Jiming Jiang receives 23-24 SAE Award

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 .

In Memoriam: Larry Tai

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:

Yi Han named as finalist in ASA Nonparametric Student Paper Competition

We are excited to announce that Yi Han, a PhD candidate in our Statistics program, has been named as a finalist of for the ASA Nonparametric Statistics Section Student Paper Competition. The prize is awarded annually by the American Statistical Association (ASA).

Yi Han's paper, entitled "Change Point Detection in Sequential Pairwise Comparison Data with Covariate Information", will be presented along with those of other finalists at the 2024 Joint Statistical Meetings in Portland.

Jue Wang wins ASA Student Paper Award

We are excited to announce that Jue Wang, a PhD candidate in our Statistics program, has been named as the winner of the First Place Award for the Statistics in Imaging Section of the ASA! The prize is awarded annually by the American Statistical Association (ASA).

Jue Wang's winning paper, entitled "Uncertainty Quantification of Object Boundaries Extracted from Spatial Point Pattern Images", will be presented along with those of other winners at the 2024 Joint Statistical Meetings in Portland.

Krishna Balasubramanian wins Grad Advising Award

We are pleased to announce that Associate Professor Krishna Balasubramanian has been named as a recipient of the 2023 Graduate Program Advising and Mentoring Award, given by the Office of Graduate Studies to advisors who have displayed outstanding excellence in advising and mentoring of their graduate students.

Jiming Jiang to present 31st Morris Hansen Lecture

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Jiming Jiang has been invited as the primary speaker for the 31st annual Morris Hansen Lecture. This lecture will be held on November 14, 2023, 

New Department Chair: Jiming Jiang

The Department of Statistics is pleased to announce that Professor Jiming Jiang has been appointed as the new Department Chair, from July 1 2023 until June 30 2026.

Professor Jiang joined the Department in 2001 from Case Western Reserve University, having received his Ph.D. in 1995 from UC Berkeley under Peter J. Bickel.

Yi Han wins ASA Student Paper Award

We are excited to announce that Yi Han, a PhD candidate in our Statistics program, has been named as a winner of this year's ASA Business and Economics Student Paper Award! The prize is awarded annually by the American Statistical Association (ASA). Yi Han's winning paper,  entitled "Structural Break Detection in Non-stationary Network Vector Autoregression Models", will be presented along with those of other winners at the 2023 Joint Statistical Meetings in Toronto.