News

GRADflix is an annual competition hosted by the University of Waterloo’s Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs (GSPA) in which graduate students create one-minute videos to describe their research. These one-minute videos act as an “elevator pitch” for graduate students to explain a complex idea to a non-specialist audience.

Our very own Luke Hagar (MMath in Statistics) has been selected as a finalist in this competition. His video titled “Beyond p-values: Sample size determination using Bayesian statistics” will be shared live along with the videos of the other finalists during this year’s showcase. This is the first time that the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science has been represented in the GRADflix competition.

The GRADflix 2021 Showcase is taking place virtually on Friday, January 29, 2021 from 3 to 5 PM (EST). After the finalists’ videos are shown live, the winners will be announced, and attendees can vote on the People’s Choice prize winner. The event will be streamed live on the GSPA YouTube channel and attendees can register online.

Please attend to show your support of Luke!

In 2020, Mary Hardy was recognized for her dedication and contributions to the Society of Actuaries (SOA) by being awarded their Distinguished Service Award.  Her award included the following annotations: 

“In recognition of her endless dedication to the advancement of the actuarial profession.”

“As a selfless individual, willing to work without recognition, she is a role model for all who have worked with her”

To learn more about about the award and past recipients, please visit the SOA website.

Chao Qian is preparing for the trading environment of the future. More than 60 percent of stock volume is attributed to algorithmic trading, but older generations of traders have never learned to code. “In the future, I expect that everyone will need to be able to code and be comfortable with AI and machine learning,” he affirmed. “Thanks to the Masters of Quantitative Finance (MQF) program, I will be ready.”

Internet users from Canadian rural and remote communities suffer from frequent Internet interruptions, which generally result from various network issues. The lack of human resources, expertise and support make these issues difficult to identifyand fix. Remote areas lack responsive and cost-effective operations or maintenance efforts.

Eli Margolis learned to appreciate math at a young age. “There was always a right and wrong answer, always a correct way of figuring something out if you searched hard enough,” she reflected.

The Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science would like to congratulate Wenyuan Li and Yechao Meng as being two of the three new recipients of The Society of Actuaries (SOA) James C. Hickman Scholar for 2020-2021, and to Ou (Jessica) Dang for having her stipend renewed. 

To learn more, read the full article on The SOA site.

When Grace Tompkins attended Waterloo’s Grad Visit Day in 2019, she was presented with an opportunity to combine her interests in public health with her research in mathematics. The Master of Mathematics in Biostatistics program was the perfect blend of mathematical theory and epidemiology that she was looking for.

Longevity risk is an essential concept for life insurance companies and reinsurance companies. A deep understanding of the risk is crucial, as an underestimation of longevity can seriously affect the financial healthiness of pension plans and annuity funds.

Statistics and Actuarial Science is proud to announce that David Saunders was appointed Director of the Centre for Financial Industries at the Fields Institute.

Glen McGee holds a PhD in biostatistics from Harvard University. He is interested in developing statistical tools to solve problems in epidemiology, environmental health, and health policy. Currently, Glen is working on Bayesian frameworks for modelling multi-pollutant mixtures, corrections for informative presence in electronic health records, and designs for multigenerational studies.