Dear Friends of UW Statistics,
Time flies, and another academic year comes to a close! I am very grateful to all our fantastic faculty, students and staff for their hard work. Our department is what it is thanks to the everyday efforts of each of its members!
I would like to start this newsletter by reporting on our graduation celebration, where we recognized the accomplishments of 40 B.S., 44 M.S. and 10 Ph.D. students this past June 7th. The ceremony featured reflections from our alumna Ayesha Ali (Ph.D., 2002) and four graduating students: Nathan Dennis (graduating from our B.S. program), Qi Wang (graduating from our full-time M.S. program), Parkes Kendrick (graduating from our part-time M.S. program) and Apara Venkat (graduating from our Ph.D. program). This year also marks the start of a new tradition of hooding our graduating Ph.D. students. We have included some photos from the event in the newsletter, and you can watch a recording of the ceremony on our YouTube channel.
I am also very happy to announce that our department continues to grow. On the faculty side, three new faculty members are joining the department. Xinwei Shen will be joining us as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in September 2025. Xinwei graduated with her Ph.D. from the Department of Mathematics at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2022, and is currently a postdoctoral scholar at ETH Zürich. Anne Wagner will be joining us this September as an Assistant Teaching Professor. Anne graduated from our Ph.D. program in 2023 and has been working as a part-time lecturer with the department since her graduation. Finally, Zoraida Fernandez-Rico will be joining us next January as an Acting Assistant Professor. Zoraida completed her Ph.D. at the Instituto de Matemática Pura e Aplicada (IMPA) in Rio de Janeiro in May 2022, and is currently a postdoctoral scholar at Columbia University. On the student side, 12 Ph.D., 34 M.S. and 66 B.S. students will be joining the department this coming Autumn. Of the 66 B.S. students, 16 are frosh joining in the first year of our new Direct-to-Major admissions pathway. Additionally, our new Honors Program, which is also starting this year, just admitted four students. We are very excited to welcome this new group into our community!
The department will see some departures this year as well. After almost 40 years at UW, Prof. Adrian Raftery is retiring. We will be holding a celebration of his career on August 9. Acting Assistant Professor Alexander Giessing, who has been with us since September 2021, will be starting a new position as Assistant Professor at the National University in Singapore. Assistant Teaching Professor Prince Allotey is also leaving the UW to move back to the East Coast.
The 2024 JSM Statistics/Biostatistics Alumni Reception will be held at Spirit of 77, located at 500 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd in Portland (very close to the Convention Center). Pub appetizers will be provided along with a cash bar. If you have not yet registered, please do so now! I look forward to seeing many of you there!
I wish you all a great summer!
Abel Rodriguez