The Department of Statistics held the Berkeley Statistics Annual Research Symposium (BSTARS) on November 14th at California Memorial Stadium. The event brought together the Berkeley Statistics community and its industry partners to survey the department's latest research developments and emphasize possible applications to statistical problems encountered in industry.

Following a welcome from Chair Haiyan Huang, attendees heard a research talk from Adjunct Professor Michael Mahoney titled "Model Selection And Ensembling When There Are More Parameters Than Data." BSTARS attendees then had the opportunity to network and connect with representatives from over 15 companies across financial tech, biostatistics and pharmaceuticals, tech startups, transportation, professional athletics, and more.

"BSTARS represents a wonderful example of our department gathering together with faculty, students, alums, industry partners, and the broader Berkeley community to share our research and commitment to the study of statistics," said Huang.

Following the networking sessions, Associate Professor Amanda Coston gave a research talk titled "Validity & algorithmic decision making." Next were graduate student lightning talks, which featured five research presentations from six current Ph.D. students. Topics ranged from quantitative analysis for genotype probabilities to extreme phenomena in large lounge models, highlighting the diversity of research among graduate students.

Scott Shi, Co-founder and CTO at IAP Silver-level member company ZettaBlock gave a brief industry talk before CDSS Chancellor's Distinguished Professor Bin Yu gave her keynote address, "Veridical Data Science and Alignment in Medical AI." Yu was introduced by Distinguished Professor and Dean of the College of Computing, Data Science, and Society, Jennifer Chayes, who spoke about new and exciting developments throughout CDSS.

Professor Ryan Tibshirani served as master of ceremonies throughout the day.

The Department of Statistics would like to thank BSTARS sponsors Amgen and CHAI for helping make the event possible and all Statistics' Industry Alliance Partners for their support and commitment to the department and its mission.

-Alex Coughlin

Photos via David Apilado Jr.