January 2024 Newsletter

Dear alumni and friends,

This semester, there was plenty to celebrate for staff, faculty, and students in our School of Statistics:

• We welcomed Benjamin Cummins to our staff, and he has been busy learning the ropes from Jeremy Terry, who has taken on a new role as our graduate programs administrator.
• We congratulated professors Adam Rothman and Jie Ding on successful promotions. Both have demonstrated significant leadership in pioneering educational programs that provide new opportunities for their students, whether in K-12 or in higher education. Read our full announcement detailing their work contributions.
• One of the greatest perks of our University work is acknowledging student success. With that in mind, we took delight in celebrating the 2023 student award winners at our fall kickoff. The kickoff was also an opportunity to welcome PhD students who joined the program this fall.

Additionally, we played a role in supporting initiatives across the College of Liberal Arts (CLA) and greater University: 

• Our Institute for Research in Statistics and its Applications (IRSA) helped to organize a Data Science Initiative Workshop on Socioeconomic Inequality, which aimed to catalyze interdisciplinary collaborations in the College of Liberal Arts. The event convened researchers to share their inspirational work and highlighted new funding opportunities for UMN-based data science research.
• IRSA organized campus-wide data science activities for the UMN Data Science Initiative (DSI). Highlights included a celebratory DSI launch party, faculty mixers to spark meaningful research partnerships, and seminars that explored the use of data in unexpected places like glassblowing arts and the National Weather Service.

As a whole, our School of Statistics was celebrated in 2023 global rankings, noted in 24th place on a list of the top 100 best performing statistics programs across universities worldwide.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I want to once again acknowledge how contributions from our school’s alumni and friends enable us to shine. A prime example: Thanks to the generosity of alumnus William E. Faragher (BA, ‘56), we hired the school’s first IRSA Faragher Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow this fall: Qiuyun Zhu. Below, Dr. Zhu shares what she is working on and what she likes about the Twin Cities.

I will be on sabbatical for the upcoming semester, and Professor Xiaotong Shen will be serving as your interim director for the School of Statistics. It’s hard to believe that when I return, flowers will be back in bloom! I look forward to connecting with you again then.

In the meantime, I invite you—our alumni—to share your updates and advice with our statistics community. Your fellow students, prospective students, and alumni love to hear what you are up to! Completed interviews may be published on our school's website and also on the College of Liberal Arts website.

Warm regards,

Galin Jones
Professor and Director
The School of Statistics