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 given to the best student paper submitted to the Bayesian Statistical Science section at Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM). Ten students are chosen as competition winners and receive travel awards to present at JSM, where the best of the ten is then selected to receive the Laplace Award.

Yifan presented his work “Nonparametric generalized fiducial inference for survival functions under censoring” at JSM. This is a joint work with Dr. Jan Hannig.

http://community.amstat.org/sbss/awards

 

New fund announced

May 21, 2018

The Department of Statistics and Operations Research recently received a generous gift from Dr. Gary Koch and Mrs. Carolyn Koch to establish the Raj Chandra Bose Graduate Student Travel Fund (through Gary G. Koch and Carolyn J. Koch and friends of the Department of Statistics and Operations Research). Dr. Koch received his Ph.D. from the Department of Statistics at UNC (one of the parent departments of the current STOR Department) in 1968 under the direction of Dr. R.C. Bose. This endowed fund will provide crucial support to our talented graduate students as they advance their research careers.

Commencement 2018

May 16, 2018

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill held its Commencement Ceremony on Sunday May 13, 2018.  Afterwards, the department held its own ceremony and reception to honor our graduates.  Department Chair Amarjit Budhiraja had some opening words before presenting the graduate students. Director of Undergraduate Studies Serhan Ziya presented the Statistics & Analytics Award to Ying Zheng, and Professor Charles Dunn presented the W. Robert Mann Award to Grant Braam.

Dr. Manoj Chari, Senior Director of Advanced Analytics at SAS Institute (and STOR alum) was our keynote speaker, with an audience in excess of 500 present.  Counting those who will be completing their degrees this summer, we awarded 11 Ph.D.’s, 20 Master’s, and 109 Bachelor’s.

Additional photos can be found on our department’s Facebook page.

Department Commencement Speaker

May 7, 2018

Manoj Chari of SAS, Inc. will deliver the department’s commencement address this year.

Manoj Chari graduated with a Ph.D. in Operations Research from UNC Chapel Hill in 1990. After a postdoctoral fellowship in Combinatorics and Optimization at the University of Waterloo, he worked at Louisiana State University as a member of the Mathematics faculty where his primary research focus was in the area of combinatorics. He also spent a year at the Technical University of Berlin as an Alexander Von Humboldt Research Fellow.

In 2003, he joined the OR department in SAS Research & Development and currently holds the position of Senior R&D Director with responsibility for Operations Research and related areas of Advanced Analytics.
He leads a department of about 45 experts, most with Ph.D. degrees in OR, computer science or related areas. The technical work of the department spans the subject areas of numerical optimization, discrete event simulation and network analysis.

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 University of California at Berkeley.

The first lecture will be “Some mathematical insights into aging and mortality” and the second, “The fundamental theorem of arithmetic for metric measure spaces.”

Steven Evans was born and raised in rural Australia.  He received his undergraduate education at the University of Sydney and his PhD from the University of Cambridge, After a stint working for the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and a post-doctoral position at the University of Virginia he joined the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley, where he has been ever since.

Evans has been a Rollo Davidson Prize winner, a Presidential Young Investigator, a Sloan Fellow, and an Institute of Mathematical Statistics Medallion Lecturer. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society, and a  Member of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Hotelling Lectures are an annual event in the Department of Statistics & Operations Research at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, honoring the memory of Professor Harold Hotelling, our first chairman. This year we are honored to have Professor Steven Evans from the University of California-Berkeley deliver our two Hotelling lectures which are open to the public.  See our upcoming events for lecture abstracts as well as details about times and locations.

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 into membership on March 21, 2018.

Ryder Best

Kevin Chen

Nicholas Larsen

John Mullan

Eric Qian

Ishan Shah

Jillian Troftgruben

Shuhan Xia

Jeff Yang

The department recognizes the exemplary academic work of these students and congratulates them on their achievements.  For more information about Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest honor society in the United States, please visit the Alpha Chapter’s website.

Call for applications

March 5, 2018

THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL

Department of Statistics and Operations Research

TEACHING ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

Applications are invited for a full-time fixed-term position at the Teaching Assistant Professor level, beginning July 2018.

This position is part of a STEM initiative to transform and reinvigorate the educational experience of students in introductory courses. Specific job responsibilities will include:

• Teaching 6 large-enrollment introductory service courses per academic year,
• Incorporating appropriate technology enhancements and pedagogy techniques in course instruction,
• Advising and mentoring undergraduate students majoring in Statistics and Analytics,

Opportunities for course re-design and development, and teaching more advanced undergraduate courses also exist. This position will begin with an initial 3-year term, with the potential to renew for additional subsequent terms. During the contract period, there may be the opportunity (but not the obligation) to teach in the Summer School for additional salary. The University and the Department highly value the work of Teaching Professors and appreciate the crucial role that they serve in our educational mission. In recognition of this, the University has established a formal career path for the long-term professional development of Teaching Professionals, including promotion to Teaching Associate Professor and Teaching Professor, as well as eligibility for teaching awards, course development grants and travel grants.

Candidates with a PhD in Statistics, Operations Research, Mathematics or a related field are encouraged to apply. Our undergraduates are among the best and most enthusiastic in the country. This is an opportunity to work with highly talented students in an outstanding university environment. Chapel Hill, with its moderate climate, great schools and proximity to arts and culture is viewed as one of the most livable communities in the United States.

Review of applications will begin on March 31 and will continue until the position is filled.

Applications only accepted through this posting: http://unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/136269

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is an equal opportunity employer that welcomes all to apply, including women, underrepresented minorities, protected veterans, and individuals with disabilities.

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 in the College of Arts and Sciences for the 2018-19 academic year.

Iain and Yang were selected for their teaching and research accomplishments to date, and for their potential to have a major impact in the field.  Dean’s Graduate Fellows will serve as ambassadors for Carolina by attending graduate student recruitment events, and will receive a one-year $4,000 addition to their regular stipend as well as a $1,000 summer stipend. This fellowship has been made possible by an endowment funded by generous gifts from many Carolina alumni. Congratulations, Iain and Yang!

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 Association’s Section on Bayesian Statistical Science.  Ten winners were selected to receive a travel award to attend the Joint Statistical Meetings in Vancouver this summer, where he will present his paper “Nonparametric generalized fiducial inference for survival functions under censoring”. This is a joint work with Dr. Jan Hannig.

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, under the National Institute of Health.  “Unlocking complex co-expression network using graphical models” is a four-year grant investigating new machine learning and graphical model tools to study genomic data.  Dr. Liu is the lead Principal Investigator (PI) on the award, and collaborates with the joint PI Dr. Wei Sun at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

 

In addition to the Statistics and Operations Research Department, Dr. Liu is on the faculty of the Biostatistics and Genetics departments and is affiliated with the Carolina Center for Genome Sciences and the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.