The University of Waterloo, which is among the top universities in the world for actuarial science and number one in co-operative learning, has combined these two things to help build a stronger insurance and pension industry in Indonesia.
Aukosh Jagannath holds a PhD in Mathematics from the Courant Institute at New York University from 2016. Since then he has been an NSF mathematical sciences postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto and Harvard University as well as a Benjamin Pierce Fellow at Harvard University. His research interests are in probability and analysis and their applications to statistical physics, combinatorial optimization, the mathematics of data science, and high-dimensional statistics. Aukosh will help develop a stronger theoretical foundation for data science and expand our links with other departments and faculties at Waterloo.
The Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science is extremely proud to announce that Diana Skryzdlo has been granted the Distinction in Teaching award. Diana's, enthusiasm in the classroom and dedication to her students earned her a top spot for this award.
The Faculty of Mathematics Award for Distinction in Teaching is granted to teachers in the Faculty of Mathematics who have consistently demonstrated outstanding pedagogical skills and a deep commitment to our students’ education.
Fangda Liu holds a PhD in Actuarial Science from the University of Waterloo from 2015. She was then an assistant professor at the Central University of Finance and Economics for 3 years, and joins us from an assistant professor position in the College of Business at Georgia State University. Her research interests include reinsurance/insurance, risk measures, risk sharing and market equilibria. Her work provides a good balance of theory and applications and she will strengthen the actuarial science group within our department.
The University of Waterloo and the Risk Managment, Economic Sustainability, and Actuarial Science Development in Indonesia (READI) are planning to graduate 745 actuarial science students in Indonesia by 2021. These students will hopefully improve the already growing insurance industry in Indonesia by adding a fresh perspective on changing risk mitigation in a world of unpredictable risks.
This cohert of students could not come at a better time. Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, is currently sinking at an alarming rate as rising sea levels are threating the city, while many of it's inhabitants are uninsured.
Read the full story on WIRED's website.
The Risk Management, Economic Sustainability and Actuarial Science (READI) Project has helped launch a government initiative launched in April that regulates the implementation of co-operative education in Indonesia.
This initiative is part of the work that READI, housed in Waterloo’s Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, has been undertaking in Indonesia.
Read the full article on the Daily Bulletin.
The Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science is pleased to announce Chao Qi (George) Li as the winner of the Samuel Eckler Medal in Actuarial Science.
Award description:
This prize was established to recognize the contribution of Samuel Eckler to the actuarial profession and is provided by Eckler Partners. The medal, which is cast in gold, is awarded each year to the outstanding graduating student in Honours Actuarial Science.
"In addition to his outstanding performance in actuarial science, George demonstrated great potential in statistics, his performance in my upper year biostatistics course was phenomenal!"
The Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science is proud to announce the winners of the 2019 Teaching Award goes to Mirabelle Huynh and Wayne Oldford!
"Thank you for your commitment to and excellence in teaching"
The Master’s of Actuarial Science program (MActSc) celebrated its 10 year anniversary with a banquet dinner on Friday May 31, 2019, welcoming back MActSc alumni, faculty, and special guests.
At the dinner, the faculty's newest scholarship, the Mary R. Hardy Graduate Award in Actuarial Science was announced. 
This endowed award was created in recognition of Mary Hardy’s immense contributions to the program and the actuarial profession. This award will be given annually to an incoming MActSc student who demonstrates both academic excellence and a strong commitment to serving the public good through volunteering and community service.
It’s not too late to donate! Please join us in honouring Mary Hardy by supporting this award. Contributions of any size can be made on the scholarship website.
In his second year of undergraduate studies at the University of Cambridge, Michael Wallace realized that statistics are everywhere when he discovered SIGNIFICANCE magazine. He’s since written a number of articles for the magazine as he believes in helping everyone understand statistics and the importance of the subject in our lives.
He began his post-secondary education thinking that he wanted to study pure mathematics, but his attention turned to statistics because he saw the practical applications. While much of his work is theoretical in the field of biostatistics, working with a lot of equations, Wallace is motivated by real-world questions that we are looking to answer.
While completing his PhD at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Wallace put his theoretical education to work with eye doctors at the University of London. Researchers there were completing a study with patients living with amblyopia, a condition where one eye experiences worse vision than the other. Common treatment includes the use of an eye patch over the good eye to retrain the bad eye through use. In this particular study, the eye patch gathered data.
This practical work taught Wallace about the importance of communication. This included learning how to ask the right questions (even if you think one may sound foolish), being prepared to admit that you don’t know what someone means, and being tactful. Helping the physicians – who are not statisticians – quickly understand complex ideas, such as measurement error, was very important. For example, although an eye doctor assesses your eyesight using an eye chart, measurement error may occur if a patient, unsure of a letter, manages to guess it correctly rather than acknowledge that they cannot see it clearly.