PhD Admissions

The Berkeley Statistics Department is a community of researchers and educators studying diverse topics within statistics, data science, and probability. We believe that individuals from diverse backgrounds offer unique perspectives that intellectually enrich our field. We are central to research life on campus and have forged strong interdisciplinary links with other departments, particularly Biostatistics, Mathematics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Political Science and Biology. We address data problems in molecular biology, geophysics, astronomy, epidemiology, neurophysiology, sociology, political science, education, demography, and the U.S. Census.

Our PhD program welcomes students from a broad range of theoretical, applied, and interdisciplinary backgrounds, and provides rigorous preparation for a future career in statistics, probability, or data science. Our top-ranked program usually takes 5 years to complete. PhD theses are diverse and varied, reflecting the scope of faculty research interests, with many students involved in interdisciplinary research. There are also Designated Emphases in Computational and Genomic Biology; Computational Precision Health; and Computational Science and Engineering if one chooses to take a more concentrated approach.

Our department has been a leader in embracing machine learning and data science. We helped found the Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS), which was launched in 2019 under Associate Provost Jennifer Chayes and continues to strengthen both our interdisciplinary ties and foundational research. Our graduates go on to solve impactful problems in academia, industry, and non-profits, informing consequential decisions such as election auditing, medical treatment, police reform, and scientific reproducibility, and developing elegant mathematical tools for understanding networks, genetics, and language, among other areas.