News

The Department proudly congratulates PhD students Laura Bumbulis and Tianyi Panfor receiving the Student Research Presentation Award in Biostatistics at the 2025 Statistical Society of Canada (SSC) annual meeting. These awards recognize graduate students who demonstrate excellence in both the conduct and communication of impactful research. This year, both Biostatistics awards went to University of Waterloo students, an exceptional achievement that highlights the strength and innovation of our graduate research community.

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The Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science is pleased to announce that Hugo Quach is the recipient of the 2025 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.

First established in 1985, the Eckler Award celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. Over the past four decades, it has recognized outstanding academic achievement and a strong commitment to excellence in actuarial science. In honour of this milestone, Eckler Ltd. has generously pledged a $20,000 donation to support the award over the next five years, reaffirming their ongoing dedication to nurturing the next generation of actuarial leaders.

Please join us in congratulating Hugo on this well-deserved recognition. His exceptional academic performance and dedication to the field exemplify the spirit of the Eckler Award.

The Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science proudly celebrates the appointment of Dr. Gord Willmot as Distinguished Professor Emeritus, recognizing his outstanding research, mentorship, and more than four decades of transformative contributions to the University of Waterloo and the global actuarial science community.

The Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science is thrilled to announce Dr. Mary Hardy’s appointment as Distinguished Professor Emerita, celebrating her extraordinary impact over 26 years as a trailblazing scholar, educator, and leader whose work has helped shape the future of actuarial science at Waterloo and beyond.

The Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science proudly celebrates the remarkable first-place victory by a team of its students, Team Factuarial, in the prestigious 2025 Society of Actuaries (SOA) Research Institute Student Research Case Study Challenge. Team Factuarial members include Math/BBA double-degree students Ki Yan Chan and William Zhang and software engineering student Kevin Jiang, along with faculty advisor Dr. Ben Feng from the Statistics and Actuarial Science Department. The annual challenge invites students to apply their actuarial expertise to real-world business problems, conducting analyses, developing models, and presenting recommendations to a panel of judges from the SOA Research Institute. Competing against 278 students in 68 teams from 42 universities across 17 countries and six continents, Team Factuarial secured the top honour and a grant prize in 2025.arial science and emerge as leaders in the field.”

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From May 2–4, the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science hosted the 2025 American Statistical Association (ASA) DataFest: an international data analysis challenge where teams of undergraduates work intensively to “find and share meaning in a large, rich, and complex data set.” This year, 130 students across 30 teams started the competition, with only 17 teams able to complete DataFest’s rigorous 48-hour challenge.

The winning teams were:

• Best Insight: Huatieloo Data Masters

• Best Use of External Data: BBGS

• Best Visualization: Team B

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Read the full announcement on the SSC website.

Congratulations Liyuan Lin, winner of the 2025 Pierre Robillard Award from the Statistical Society of Canada for her PhD thesis, "Measures for risk, dependence and diversification,". Her work, completed at the University of Waterloo, focused on quantitative risk management, introduces a novel diversification index and spans finance, actuarial science, and statistics, demonstrating both theoretical depth and practical impact. Lin is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Business School at Monash University, Australia.

The Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science is pleased to congratulate the University of Waterloo team on their success at the 2025 Munich Re Cup this March. 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.

Out of 20 initial teams, the University of Waterloo team, consisting of actuarial science students Sue Liu, Bernice Xiao, Yue Zheng, and faculty advisor Emily Kozlowski, was selected as one of the six finalist teams that competed at the two-day in-person final round of the case competition in Toronto.

At the in-person competition the Waterloo team competed against five other teams coming from top-tier actuarial programs across North America on this year’s case topics of Longevity Risk and a comprehensive strategy to break into the Pension Risk Transfer (PRT) market. The University of Waterloo team delivered an impressive performance, winning third place and $4000 of prize money. Congratulations on this well-earned achievement!

Read the full version on the Faculty of Math website.

Austin Riis-Due’s actuarial journey began in high school on a whim, studying for his first exam with a friend. By the time he graduated from The University of Texas at Austin, he had passed seven Society of Actuaries (SOA) exams. Now, at just 24, Riis-Due has achieved Fellowship in the SOA—an honor typically earned much later in an actuary’s career—while pursuing a PhD in Actuarial Science & Quantitative Finance at the University of Waterloo.

Austin credits his success to Waterloo’s top-tier program and mentorship from his PhD advisors, Professors David Landriault and Bin Li, as well as Professor Yi Shen. His passion for mathematics and risk modeling has led him to global collaborations, research papers, and conferences across Europe and Africa.

Beyond academics, he cherishes the actuarial community’s tight-knit network, the ability to solve real-world financial challenges, and his deep-rooted love for Texas Longhorns football. With a bright future ahead, Riis-Due continues to push the boundaries of actuarial science while inspiring the next generation of scholars.