The Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science is a top-tier academic unit among statistical and actuarial science globally. Our community is engaged in topics such as actuarial science, biostatistics, data science, quantitative finance, statistics, & statistics-computing. Our department is home to 70 full-time faculty researching diverse and exciting areas, over 2000 undergraduate students from around the world, and approximately 200 graduate students in master, doctoral, and professional programs.
News
Professor Ruodu Wang honoured with 2026 Frontiers of Science Award
Ruodu Wang, Canada Research Chair in Quantitative Risk Management and professor in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, has received the 2026 Frontiers of Science Award (FSA) from the International Congress of Basic Sciences (ICBS), shared with his co-author Vladimir Vovk, professor at Royal Holloway, University of London, for the paper titled “E-values: Calibration, combination, and applications” published in the Annals of Statistics in 2021. (See the paper on arXiv or view the journal website.)
Dr. Ben Feng Receives 2025 OUSA Teaching Award
Ben Feng, Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science and Director of the Master of Actuarial Science program, has been named the University of Waterloo recipient of the 2025 Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA) Teaching Award.
University of Waterloo places second place at the prestigious Munich Re Cup
The Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science is pleased to congratulate the University of Waterloo team on their success at the 2026 Munich Re Cup. The Munich Re Cup is the premier actuarial science student case competition in North America, with a total of $20,000 of prize money handed out each year. The University of Waterloo team delivered an impressive performance, winning second place and $6,000 of prize money.
Out of 22 initial teams, the University of Waterloo team – consisting of actuarial science students Joanna Li, Adrian Lock, and Michelle Ng, and faculty advisors Emily Kozlowski and James Adcock – was one of six finalist teams that competed against teams coming from top-tier actuarial programs across North America at the two-day, in-person final round of the case competition in Toronto.
This year’s case topic was GenAI, and teams were tasked with creating a comprehensive AI-driven technology solution to transform the underwriting and claims processes at a medium-sized life insurer. The depth of the Waterloo team’s technical knowledge, cost-benefit analysis, and understanding of different stakeholders’ perspectives – along with their excellent handling of questions during the Q&A portion – were all praised by the judges at Munich Re. Congratulations to the team on this well-earned achievement!