News Archive
News Archive
Recent
New faculty
The Statistics and Operations Research Department would like to welcome our newest faculty members...
SDSS associate dean
Prof. Budhiraja serves as associate dean for academic and faculty affairs in the School of Data Science and Society...
INFORMS award
Alumnus Minghui Liu was part of the winning team for the 2023 INFORMS Franz Edelman award...
Alzheimer's discovery
Prof. Zhang uncovered how Alzheimer's can accelerate atrophy in subcortical brain regions in individuals aged 60-75...
New IMS Fellow
Professor Kai Zhang has been named a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics...
Hotelling Lectures
Amir Dembo will deliver the Hotelling Lectures, an annual event in the Department...
NSF fellowship
Our student Michael Nizenson was awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship...
STOR in Science Expo
Last Saturday, April 1st, the STOR booth at the UNC Science Expo was a success!
SAIL
The department is excited about the launch of the UNC Sports Analysis Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL)...
Bahadur lecture
Prof. Budhiraja will be giving the plenary Bahadur lecture at the 2023 IISA meeting...
Optimization school
Gabor Pataki was an invited Professor at the Vienna Graduate School of Computational Optimization...
Data Science Position
The School of Data Science and Society and STOR are hiring a joint position...
RTG mini course
Sidney Resnick will be giving a series of lectures on: Multivariate Power Laws and Preferential Attachment...
RTG Women Luncheon
This semester we will have Lisa M. LaVange from Biostatistics as the faculty role model...
Doing good with OR
Nilay Argon is speaking on the Supply Chain Resource Cooperative (SCRC) academic conference...
Newsletter
Welcome to the 2022 annual issue of STORies, which looks back at the department’s past academic year...
New faculty
The Statistics and Operations Research Department would like to welcome our newest faculty members...
Ideas Seminar
Starting this Fall, we will launch the Ideas Seminar which will involve both invited speakers and reading groups...
SEPC at UNC
STOR is organizing the second installment of the 2022 Southeastern Probability Conference (SEPC) on August 8-9...
More than Numbers
We invite UNC faculty and staff to join us for the next Carolina Data Science Now seminar...
Leadbetter obituary
Malcolm Ross Leadbetter died on February 26, 2022, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina...
Data Science cohort
More than 60 graduates of Carolina’s Class of 2022 will accept diplomas this weekend...
Older News
Available Faculty Positions
October 3, 2022
The department seeks to hire two new faculty members... Find out more »
Postdoctoral position in NSF RTG
May 15, 2022
The Department invites applications for a three-year postdoctoral fellowship starting July 1, 2022... Find out more »
Bin Yu to deliver Hotelling Lectures
April 13, 2022
Bin Yu will deliver the Hotelling Lectures, an annual event in the Department of Statistics & Operations Research... Find out more »
STOR at the UNC Science Expo
April 6, 2022
Come and join our students and faculty who will be hosting the STOR booth this year... Find out more »
Graduate program ranked 11th in the nation
April 6, 2022
Our graduate program is ranked 11th among all Statistics programs in the nation... Find out more »
Sayan Banerjee receives CAREER grant
December 28, 2021
Sayan Banerjee received an NSF CAREER grant... Find out more »
Seeing patterns in the data
December 6, 2021
Mariana Olvera-Cravioto hopes the new data science minor will make data more accessible to students... Find out more »
Emerging patterns in large random systems
December 5, 2021
Sayan Banerjee's interview with Endeavors... Find out more »
Faculty Positions
September 28, 2021
The department seeks to hire three new faculty members... Find out more »
STORies Newsletter - 2021
September 14, 2021
Welcome to the 2021 annual issue of STORies, which looks back at the department’s past academic year... Find out more »
New Data Science Minor
August 23, 2021
Our department has introduced a Data Science minor in Fall 2021... Find out more »
Prof. Budhiraja was appointed an Interim Director of the Chairs Leadership Program (CLP)
August 23, 2021
Prof. Budhiraja was appointed an Interim Director of the Chairs Leadership Program (CLP) ... Find out more »
Recent grants 2021 in the department
August 23, 2021
Recent research grants by faculty in the department include ... Find out more »
Prof. Richard Smith has been appointed to two national boards/committees
August 23, 2021
Prof. Smith has been appointed to two national boards/committees... Find out more »
Data Science & Analytics Career Fair
August 12, 2021
University Career Services and the Department of Statistics and Operations Research are hosting a joint career fair... Find out more »
Nikole Hannah-Jones tenure case
June 25, 2021
With the general support of STOR faculty, the STOR chair sent the following letter to the UNC Board of Trustees... Find out more »
Shayna Hill wins Massey Award for outstanding service
June 15, 2021
Eight Carolina employees will receive the 2021 C. Knox Massey Distinguished Service Award one of the most prestigious distinctions for faculty and staff... Find out more »
Alex Touzov places second
June 3, 2021
Ph.D. student Alex Touzov won a second prize in the poster session at the 2021 Mixed Integer Programming Workshop... Find out more »
Faculty Council honors Shayna Hill
April 27, 2021
The UNC Faculty Council recently honored our Department Manager, Shayna Hill, for her work as chair of the Employee Forum... Find out more »
Master's student Wonkyung Jang receives Tanner Award
March 16, 2021
Our M.S. student Wonkyung Jang, who is also a Ph.D. student in the School of Education, has been honored by the Office of the Provost with... Find out more »
Alumnus selected for ICSA award
March 12, 2021
Dr. Guan Yu of the University at Buffalo has been selected by the International Chinese Statistical Association as their... Find out more »
Annual department awards
February 10, 2021
While we were unable to hold an in-person gathering to celebrate the end of year holidays, the Statistics and Operations Research Department... Find out more »
Yiyun Luo wins ASA award
January 25, 2021
STOR Ph.D. student Yiyun Luo has won the American Statistical Association's Business and Economic Statistics Student Paper Award... Find out more »
STOR at University Research Week 2020
December 11, 2020
University Research Week 2020 took place October 19-23, 2020. STOR organized some short research talks in our classes to share... Find out more »
Richard Smith named AAAS Fellow
December 4, 2020
Dr. Richard Smith has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of few... Find out more »
Winning an Election, Not a Popularity Contest
October 26, 2020
In two of the last five U.S. Presidential elections, the winner received fewer popular votes than his opponent... Find out more »
A Pandemic Shapes a Modeler's Research Vision
October 13, 2020
Professor Serhan Ziya is applying his expertise in operations research to help hospitals and emergency departments allocate... Find out more »
Alumnus Receives ASA Award
October 6, 2020
Citing his "outstanding contribution" to small area estimation, the theory and practice of Bayesian statistics as well as... Find out more »
STORies Newsletter - 2020
October 5, 2020
Welcome to the inaugural annual issue of STORies. STORies aim to share, celebrate and record STOR happenings in the year’s past... Find out more »
Department Activities Related to COVID-19
June 30, 2020
Professors Nilay Argon, Yufeng Liu and Serhan Ziya, together with graduate student Qian Cheng, have developed a tool... Find out more »
Andrew Nobel Promoted to Distinguished Professor
June 1, 2020
The Department is pleased to announce that faculty member Andrew B. Nobel has been appointed as the Robert Paul Ziff... Find out more »
Professors Bhamidi and Hannig Named IMS Fellows
May 21, 2020
The Institute of Mathematical Statistics has selected their cohort of new Fellows for 2020, and we have learned... Find out more »
Congratulations 2020 Graduates
May 8, 2020
Congratulations class of 2020! We are so proud of you! Find out more »
Professor Argon Quoted in Scientific American
March 23, 2020
Research by Professors Nilay and Ziya, in collaboration with Dr. Huiyin Argon, a 2016 graduate of STOR, now an Assistant Professor at Hong Kong... Find out more »
New courses for undergraduate students
March 18, 2020
The STOR Department is pleased to announce new courses coming soon (as early as Fall 2020) as well as some changes in some... Find out more »
Bin Yu to deliver Hotelling Lectures
February 25, 2020
The Hotelling Lectures are an annual event in the Department of Statistics & Operations Research at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill... Find out more »
North Carolina ASA Chapter recognizes Steve Marron
February 12, 2020
The North Carolina chapter of the American Statistical Association presented a Senior Statistician award to Dr. Steve Marron... Find out more »
Weibin Mo Wins SLDS Paper Competition
January 21, 2020
PhD student Weibin Mo has been selected as a winner of the Statistical Learning and Data Science Student Paper Award competition. In addition to a cash prize... Find out more »
Graduate Student Website
November 22, 2019
Our amazing graduate students have created their own website which is designed to be a place to have all your questions about student life answered... Find out more »
STOR at the University Research Week
November 14, 2019
Professors Jan Hannig and Mario Giacomazzo, from STOR, along with Nhan Pham and Aleksandr Touzov, two of our Ph.D. students, and Tiffany... Find out more »
STOR Students Present at Sports Analytics Conferences
October 1, 2019
STOR seniors Spencer Siegel, Dan Barlow and James Bury have recently made presentations at two sports analytics conferences... Find out more »
Boston Marathon Qualifying Standards
October 1, 2019
Faculty member Richard Smith and STOR senior Spencer Siegel visits the Boston Athletic Association, organizers of the Boston Marathon... Find out more »
An interview of Kai Zhang on scientific reproducibility
August 23, 2019
Dr. Zhang was interviewed about his work on post-selection inference... Find out more »
Kai Zhang receives NSF grant
August 23, 2019
Dr. Kai Zhang has recently been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation. "Binary Expansion Statistics: A Nonparametric Inference Framework for Big Data"... Find out more »
Shayna Hill on Search Committee
August 5, 2019
Our own Department Manager, Shayna Hill, will be serving as a member of the search committee for UNC-Chapel Hill's new Chancellor... Find out more »
STAN major internship on Chapel Hill's sustainability initiative
July 31, 2019
Town Council intern, rising junior Daniel Bowen is making his adopted hometown of Chapel Hill a better place to live. Working alongside... Find out more »
STAN Student Gives Back to Chapel Hill
July 31, 2019
One of the things I've taken away from this internship is that there are lots of ways to get involved in local government, not just from a staff perspective... Find out more »
Jan Hannig receives NSF grant
July 30, 2019
Dr. Jan Hannig has recently been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation... Find out more »
Commencement Ceremony
May 21, 2019
The Statistics and Operations Research Department held its annual Commencement Ceremony on Sunday, May 12, 2019 in the... Find out more »
Annual Talent Show
May 10, 2019
The Statistics and Operations Research department's annual Talent Party was held at the home of Dr. Vidyadhar Kulkarni... Find out more »
UNC Team Tarheelytics takes second place in SOA challenge
April 23, 2019
Congratulations to the team of five UNC undergraduates who finished second among all competitors in the Society of Actuaries (SOA) Case Study... Find out more »
An Interview With Professor Argon
April 3, 2019
Nilay Tanık Argon is a professor in the Department of Statistics and Operations Research within the UNC College of Arts & Sciences. She researches stochastic systems... Find out more »
Congratulations new Phi Beta Kappa members
March 28, 2019
The Statistics and Operations Research department offers congratulations to our undergraduate majors who were recently... Find out more »
Summer School Update
March 15, 2019
This year we are increasing our Summer School offerings to include STOR 320, Intro to Data Science. This immensely popular class... Find out more »
Hotelling Lecturer Announced
March 1, 2019
The Hotelling Lectures are an annual event in the Department of Statistics & Operations Research honoring the memory of Professor Harold Hotelling Find out more »
Zhengling Qi wins Student Paper Competition
January 11, 2019
Zhengling Qi, a PhD student in Statistics under advisor Yufeng Liu, has recently been selected as one of five winners of the 2019 Statistical Learning... Find out more »
Professor Kai Zhang addresses "reproducibility"
December 17, 2018
To help people understand some of the new challenges in statistics, Dr. Kai Zhang has recently published an article... Find out more »
2018 Holiday Party
December 7, 2018
The Department of Statistics and Operations Research held its annual Holiday Party on December 6th. Amid the food and fellowship... Find out more »
New Phi Beta Kappa members
November 27, 2018
The Department of Statistics and Operations Research would like to congratulate undergraduate students... Find out more »
Melody Zhu wins at Optimization Day
November 13, 2018
Melody Zhu, 4th year Ph.D. student in Operations Research, has received a poster prize for her talk... Find out more »
UNC to host Triangle Lectures in Combinatorics
September 7, 2018
The Triangle Lectures in Combinatorics is a series of combinatorial workshops held each semester on a Saturday in the... Find out more »
Welcome new faculty members
August 15, 2018
The Statistics and Operations Research Department would like to welcome our newest faculty members... Find out more »
Yifan Cui, Ph.D. (2018) receives Laplace Award
August 10, 2018
Congratulations to recent graduate Yifan Cui, recipient of the 2018 Laplace Award. The Laplace Award is... Find out more »
New fund announced
May 21, 2018
The Department of Statistics and Operations Research recently received a generous gift from... Find out more »
Commencement 2018
May 16, 2018
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill held its Commencement Ceremony on Sunday May 13, 2018. Afterwards... Find out more »
Department Commencement Speaker
May 7, 2018
Manoj Chari of SAS, Inc. will deliver the department's commencement address this year... Find out more »
Hotelling Speaker Announced
March 8, 2018
This year's Hotelling Lectures will be presented by Steven N. Evans, Professor of Statistics and Mathematics at the... Find out more »
New Phi Beta Kappa Inductees
March 8, 2018
The Alpha of North Carolina Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa has announced that the following STOR students will be initiated... Find out more »
Call for applications
March 5, 2018
Applications are invited for a full-time fixed-term position at the Teaching Assistant Professor level, beginning July 2018... Find out more »
Dean's Graduate Fellows Announced
March 5, 2018
Ph.D. students Iain Carmichael (Statistics) and Yang Yu (INSTORE) are among 31 UNC graduate students selected as Dean’s Graduate Fellows... Find out more »
Yifan Cui receives ASA award
January 24, 2018
The department congratulates Ph.D. student Yifan Cui, who has won an award for his paper from the American Statistical... Find out more »
Dr. Yufeng Liu awarded grant
December 12, 2017
Dr. Yufeng Liu has recently been awarded a $1.6 million grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences... Find out more »
Carolina Grad Named Schwarzman Scholar
December 4, 2017
Congratulations to our 2015 MDS alum Min Yang on being selected for this prestigious program! Find out more »
Dr. J.S. Marron to be Visiting Lecturer
October 3, 2017
During the month of October Professor Steve Marron will be the Al-Kindi Distinguished Statistics Lecturer at King Abdullah University... Find out more »
Faculty search - Assistant Professor
September 19, 2017
The Department of Statistics and Operations Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has an opening for a tenure-track position... Find out more »
Dr. Yufeng Liu Named IMS Fellow
September 16, 2017
Yufeng Liu, Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been named Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics... Find out more »
Dr. Vladas Pipiras awarded competitive Senior Faculty Research and Scholarly Leave
August 22, 2017
Professor Vladas Pipiras received a competitive Senior Faculty Research and Scholarly Leave for Fall 2017 semester... Find out more »
UNC Team Places 3rd, Earns Grant
May 8, 2017
A team of five students recently competed in the Society of Actuaries 2017 Student Case Study Challenge, finishing third... Find out more »
Dr. Vladas Pipiras received NSF grant on “Statistical models, inference and computation for multidimensional time series data”
May 3, 2017
Numerous data are nowadays collected over time and across multiple, often large number of sources, for example, the BOLD time signals across... Find out more »
Mark He awarded competitive DoD Fellowship
April 26, 2017
The department congratulates Ph. D. candidate Mark He, who has been awarded a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship... Find out more »
UNC team wins big at Duke Datathon
April 24, 2017
Ph.D. candidates Yunxiao Liu, Iain Carmichael, and John Palowitch, along with Yiming Hu, a Ph.D. candidate from Yale Biostatistics, took first place... Find out more »
The article "Bad semidefinite programs: They all look the same" by Professor Gabor Pataki is chosen as a featured article by SIAM Journal on Optimization
March 21, 2017
The article by Gabor Pataki, "Bad semidefinite programs: they all look the same" has been chosen as a "Featured article" by SIAM Journal... Find out more »
Hotelling Lectures to be presented by Aad van der Vaart
February 23, 2017
This year's Hotelling Lectures will be presented by Aad van der Vaart, Professor and Scientific Director of the Mathematical Institute of... Find out more »
Dr. Kai Zhang received NSF BIGDATA grant on "Statistical Theory and Methods Beyond the Dimensionality Barrier"
February 18, 2017
With recent advances in technology, it is now possible to measure and record significant numbers of features on a single individual. The volume... Find out more »
Dr. Andrew Nobel received NIH collaboration grant on "Multi-tissue and network models for next-generation eQTL studies"
February 17, 2017
Expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) studies seek to identify genomic variants that influence the expression of particular genes, and... Find out more »
Dr. Jan Hannig and Dr. Steve Marron received NSF grant on "Statistical approaches to big data analytics"
February 17, 2017
The major challenges to be studied in this grant include Data Integration, Data Heterogeneity and Parallelization. Data Integration is a recently... Find out more »
Dr. Shankar Bhamidi and Dr. Andrew Nobel received NSF grant on "Iterative Testing Procedures and High-dimensional Scaling Limits of Extremal Random Structures"
February 17, 2017
Over the past ten years there has been a great deal of work in the statistics community devoted to the problem of testing and estimating associations... Find out more »
Dr. Kai Zhang received NSF grant on "Geometric Perspectives on the Correlation"
February 16, 2017
In modern statistical analysis, datasets often contain a large number of variables with complicated dependence structures. This situation is... Find out more »
Dr. Nilay Argon and Dr. Serhan Ziya received NSF grant on "Distribution of Patients to Medical Facilities in Mass-Casualty Events"
February 16, 2017
Mass-casualty events such as terrorist attacks and natural disasters can affect hundreds to thousands of people and place significant burdens... Find out more »
Dr. Quoc Tran-Dinh received NSF grant on "Efficient methods for large scale self concordant convex minimization"
February 15, 2017
Recent progress in modern convex optimization provides a powerful tool for scientific discovery. In theory, many classical... Find out more »
Dr. Shankar Bhamidi received NSF grant on "Dynamic network models on entrance boundary and continuum scaling limits, condensation phenomena and probabilistic combinatorial optimization"
February 15, 2017
The last few years have witnessed an explosion in the amount of empirical data on real networks motivating an array... Find out more »
Dr. Yufeng Liu received NSF grant on "Foundations of Nonconvex Problems in BigData Science and Engineering: Models, Algorithms, and Analysis"
February 15, 2017
In today's digital world, huge amounts of data, i.e., big data, can be found in almost every aspect of scientific research and human activity... Find out more »
Dr. Andrew Nobel received NSF collaboration grant on "Random dynamical systems and limit theorems for optimal tracking"
February 15, 2017
The proposed research investigates the structure of families of dynamical systems from two complementary points of view... Find out more »
Hannan gift
February 8, 2017
Department of Statistics and Operations Research received a generous gift from the estate of Dr. James Francis Hannan and... Find out more »
Dr. Yufeng Liu given Breiman award
January 23, 2017
Professor Yufeng Liu was selected for the Inaugural Leo Breiman Junior Awards by the Section on Statistical Learning... Find out more »
Two papers by STOR graduate students selected as winners in American Statistical Association competitions
January 20, 2017
Two of our graduate students, Jianyu Liu and Zhengling Qi, have won paper competitions sponsored by the American Statistical Association... Find out more »
Dr. Jan Hannig explains lottery cheating in "What Matters in North Carolina"
December 9, 2016
Professor Hannig was a guest interview on "What Matters in North Carolina" to discuss his statistical assessment of people who have won the lottery... Find out more »
Dr. Vladas Pipiras’ work on extreme values of ship motions is discussed in the US Navy news
October 17, 2016
Prof. Vladas Pipiras from the Department of Statistics and Operations Research has been collaborating with... Find out more »
Dr. Jan Hannig explains lottery odds to The Charlotte Observer
September 30, 2016
Some NC lottery players win so often, their good fortune defies logic. Are they gaming the system? Find out more »
Welcome new faculty members
September 29, 2016
The Statistics and Operations Research Department would like to welcome our newest faculty members... Find out more »
Dr. Shankar Bhamidi's first year seminar gets a visit from the Dean
September 28, 2016
Every year the STOR department offers a number of First Year Seminars. These are meant to introduce incoming first year students to... Find out more »
New research grants received by STOR faculty
September 23, 2016
With the start of the 2016-17 school year, faculty members in the Department of Statistics and Operations Research have received a number of... Find out more »
Ryder Best receives CASE scholarship
July 15, 2016
Congratulations to Ryder Best, an undergraduate student of Mathematical Decision Sciences and Economics, who has received the 2016... Find out more »
Dr. Walter L. Deemer Excellence in Teaching Award
June 15, 2016
A new award to recognize excellence in teaching by faculty and graduate students has been established in STOR. This has been made possible by... Find out more »
Dr. Jan Hannig named ASA Fellow
May 15, 2016
Professor Jan Hannig has been named a fellow in the American Statistical association (ASA). He will receive the certificate at a ceremony August 2... Find out more »
Dr. Nilay Argon featured in UNC spotlight: Women in Stem
April 6, 2016
Professor Nilay Argon has been featured in UNC spotlight: Women in Stem. This UNC Research timeline spans the past 116 years... Find out more »
MDS students initiated into Alpha of North Carolina Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa
March 22, 2016
MDS students Damien Gu, Devon Francis Martin and Rachel Lee Nesbit will be initiated into Alpha of the North Carolina Chapter of... Find out more »