Steve Drekic

Steve Drekic received his BA with Honours in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Windsor in 1994. A year later, he received his MSc degree in Statistics from the University of Windsor. In 1999, he completed his dissertation ("Methods to Reduce Delay in Preemptive Priority Queues") to earn his Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Western Ontario. Since joining the University of Waterloo in 2000, Professor Drekic has taught a variety of courses in actuarial science, mathematics, and statistics. In 2015, he was awarded both a Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science Teaching Award and a Faculty of Mathematics Award for Distinction in Teaching.

Professor Drekic has been actively involved in the Canadian Operational Research Society (CORS). He took over the editorial duties of the Society's newsletter, the CORS Bulletin, in 1998. He held this position for four years before becoming an executive Councillor in 2002. This was then followed by a nomination to Vice President, and finally, to the position of President which he held in 2005-2006. For his longstanding service to the Society, Professor Drekic was awarded a CORS Service Award in 2007. From 2015-2017, he served as President of the Queueing Theory Special Interest Group of CORS, which was founded in 2011 and has, as its chief mandate, the promotion of the discipline within Canada. In addition, Professor Drekic became an elected member of the International Statistical Institute in 2005 and served as an Associate Editor for the INFORMS Journal on Computing from 2009-2018.

Professor Drekic has co-authored over 40 articles, and has published in key journals across several disciplines, including actuarial science, operations research, and statistics. His work has garnered particular attention in the fields of applied probability, insurance risk/ruin theory, and queueing theory. Professor Drekic's expertise lies in the use of probabilistic/stochastic techniques with advanced computational methods to analyze mathematical problems arising in several different application areas.