News

Mary Thompson (Statistics and Actuarial Science), David Hammond, (School of Public Health and Health Systems), and Geoffrey Fong (Psychology), were jointly awarded a 2021 Governor General’s Innovation Award for the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Project.

The ITC Project is headed by Fong and conducts research into effective tobacco control policies such as graphic health warnings, smoke free laws, advertising bans and tobacco taxes. The Award celebrates excellence in innovation that makes a positive impact on quality of life in Canada.

Read the whole story on Waterloo News.

When Sacha Tihanyi was halfway through an undergraduate economics degree, he recognized a budding passion for mathematics. “I had many broad interests in school, but something flipped for me during that program,” he remembered. “I chose Waterloo because it had a reputation as the best mathematics school in Canada.”

Changbao Wu, Professor of Statistics in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at University of Waterloo, has been named Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS).

Dr. Wu is honored with the fellowship for his “important and original research contributions to survey sampling theory and official statistics, especially for the development of model-calibration theory and techniques, empirical likelihood methods for complex surveys, and robust inferential procedures for analyzing non-probability samples”.

Founded in 1935, the IMS is one of the world’s premier societies in statistics and probability. Each Fellow nominee is assessed by a committee of their peers and the election is based on “demonstrated distinction in research in statistics or probability, by publication of independent work of merit”. This qualification may be partly or wholly waived in the case of either a candidate of well-established leadership whose contribution to the field of statistics or probability other than original research shall be judged of equal value; or a candidate of well-established leadership in the application of statistics or probability, whose work has contributed greatly to the utility of and the appreciation of these areas.

The list of the 2021 class of IMS Fellows can be found at the IMS website.

As a master’s student, Chris Salahub completed a project focused on reducing the risk for cyclists on the busy streets of Zurich. His passion for leveraging data to solve real-world problems is what drew him back to the Faculty of Mathematics, where he previously earned a bachelor’s degree, to pursue a PhD in statistics.

“I like to think I’m a curious person,” said Jennifer Haid (BMath’04), a native of the Waterloo Region. When she learned about Waterloo’s Math Day from her high school math teacher, she decided to attend in hopes of learning about a career path that would leverage her aptitude for mathematics in the business world. “I remember watching a professor deliver a presentation about actuarial science and thinking two things: It was challenging, and I could do it,” she shared. 

The International Congress on Insurance: Mathematics and Economics is the largest annual academic gathering in Actuarial Science. It has been hosted in Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia since 1997. The IME congress is, for the first time, hosted online this year on July 5-9, 2021 due to COVID-19. 

This virtual IME international congress is jointly hosted by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Pennsylvania State University in the United States, Ulm University in Germany, and the University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney) in Australia. 

Professor Ruodu Wang will deliver one of the five keynote speeches in this virtual congress. To learn more, please see the program for this event.

Contratulations Ilia Sucholutsky winner of the Waterloo Artificial Intelligent (AI) Institute Graduate Scholarship 2021.   

This scholarship was awarded to at least one PhD and one Masters student from each of the University's six faculties; Applied Health Science, Arts, Engineering, Environment, Mathematics, and Science.  This year, Ilia Sucholutsky was the PhD recipient representing the Faculty of Mathematics. 

For more information about the scholarships, please visit Waterloo.AI site.  

Katia Naccarato has never shied away from exploring an unfamiliar path, hitting a dead end, and trying a different one. Before she enrolled in the Master of Actuarial Science (MActSc) program at the Faculty of Mathematics, she was laser-focused on pursuing a career in medicine. Her current trajectory looks nothing like she expected, but she’s confident she’s heading in the right direction.

Samantha Wallis’s enthusiasm for statistics is matched only by her longtime passion for visual arts. As she considers her path forward after graduating with a degree in mathematics, Wallis thinks about how to meld her two interests into a single career. While she hasn’t landed on a definitive answer, she has a strong hunch where she will go next.

Contratulations to our fourth year actuarial science students who won first place in the 2021 ASNA Case competition!

Team Members:

• Nianchen (Steven) Liu
• Yifan (Eva) Li
• Cheng (Robin) Wang
• Chen Han (Owen) Lin

Background information: 

The formal name of the Convention is Actuarial Students’ National Association (ASNA). Every year hundreds of students across different Canadian Universities gather with the senior managers and directors of multiple well-known companies to learn about the future and the changes of the actuarial industry. Furthermore, it is a great opportunity for students to network with the employers to earn insights and potential offers. Hosted by the exact convention, the case competition (ASNA Case Competition) is an annual competition with its final round occurring during the days of the convention, with multiple professional actuaries being the judges. During the competition, we are asked to build essentially a brand new insurance product with some historic information of our clients and analyze how we should model and set its price.