News & Events

The Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science is pleased to announce that Ting Zhang is the recipient of the 2026 Samuel Eckler Gold Medal. This prestigious award is presented annually to the graduating student with the highest academic standing in the Actuarial Science major at the University of Waterloo.

Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science researchers Stefan Steiner, Mahsa Panahi  and Jock MacKay, along with collaborator Jeroen de Mast of the University of Amsterdam, have received the 2026 Brumbaugh Award from the American Society for Quality (ASQ) for their paper, A review of leveraged sample selection in variation reduction projects, published in Quality Engineering.

The Statistical Society of Canada (SSC) has awarded the 2026 Canadian Journal of Statistics Award to University of Waterloo researchers Meixi Chen, Reza Ramezan and Martin Lysy for their paper, Fast and scalable inference for spatial extreme value models, published in the Canadian Journal of Statistics in 2025.

Dr. Charmaine Dean has been named the 2026 recipient of the Award for Impact of Applied and Collaborative Work presented by the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC) and Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute (CANSSI) .

Changbao Wu, Professor in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo, is the recipient of the 2026 Gold Medal of the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC), the Society’s highest honour.

Ali Ghodsi, professor in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, has co-authored a new textbook, Elements of Deep Learning.

The book offers a comprehensive introduction to deep learning and neural networks, combining mathematical rigor with hands-on practice. Covering both foundational concepts and emerging topics, the text explores areas including convolutional neural networks, Transformers, large language models, diffusion models, graph neural networks, reinforcement learning, and more.

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.)