We are delighted to share this remembrance of David Blackwell written by Peter Bickel for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences titled, "David Blackwell, 1919-2010: An Explorer in Mathematics and Statistics."
Professor Philip Stark was interviewed by PBS NewsHour to discuss risk-limiting audits, which are now being used in over 45 states to verify the accuracy of election results: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-some-election-officials-are-trying....
We are pleased to announce the panel discussion on "Election Integrity and Security" in the Berkeley Conversations series, Monday, October 26th, 2-3 pm (https://bids.berkeley.edu/events/election-integrity-and-security).
More good news on the Data Science front with a $12.5 million National Science Foundation award to UC Berkeley and MIT for the creation of the Foundations of Data Science Institute (FODSI). Peter Bartlett will be Co-Director of FODSI and other Berkeley PIs include Mike Jordan, Martin Wainwright, and Bin Yu.
Congratulations to Peter Bartlett (PI) and Bin Yu (co-PI) who were awarded $10 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Simons Foundation to investigate the theoretical underpinnings of deep learning!
Actor/comedian Rainn Wilson surprised the Class of 2020 with a video message on the Statistics Department's Graduation Tribute that went live on You Tube Friday, June 5th at noon PST.
STATISTICS GRADUATION TRIBUTE 2020
LIVE STREAM EVENT
Friday, June 5, 2020 at 12 p.m. PST.
Although we are disappointed we are not able to hold a commencement ceremony and celebrate together in person this year, we wanted to do something for you and have come up with a plan to create a video to honor you and your accomplishments.
We are pleased to invite you to view this live streamed celebration on Friday, June 5, 2020 at 12 p.m. PST.
Congratulations to our SF-Bay Area ASA Student Travel Award Winners! Eli Ben-Michael, Nima Hejazi and Yu Wang will be presenting their work virtually on June 18.
Every year the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of American Statistical Association (SFASA) issues Student Travel Awards to graduate students who plan to give a presentation at the annual Joint Statistical Meeting (JSM). This year’s JSM will be held virtually from August 1st to August 6th, 2020.
Berkeley alumnus Shankar Bhamidi, Associate Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been named Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS). Dr. Bhamidi received the award for his many outstanding contributions to a wide variety of topics in network modeling and its applications. He completed his PhD in 2008, under David Aldous.
We are delighted to announce that Mike Jordan received an Honorary Doctorate from Yale University. Previous Berkeley honorees include David Blackwell (Statistics), Steven Chu, and Jennifer Doudna.
We are thrilled that Statistics Major Anna Boser is this year’s winner of the University Medal, Berkeley’s highest honor for a graduating senior. The University Medal was established in 1871 and the “Medalist is an exemplar of the university's highest ideals." Anna maintained a 4.0 GPA while also participating in extensive field research and serving as an EMT in the Berkeley Medical Reserve Corps.
Congratulations to our PhD student Katherine Kempfert who has been selected to receive a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship! The NSF GRFP program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited US institutions.
Two Sigma has generously offered to support a graduate student fellowship for the academic year 2020-21. This competitive fellowship provides a year of support to an exceptional PhD graduate student within the department. Congratulations to Daniel Soriano who has been awarded the department Two Sigma Fellowship for 2020-21!
Statistics faculty Nick Jewell and his daughter Britta Jewell have another article in the New York Times on "The Huge Cost of Waiting to Contain the Pandemic".
The Yu Group at UC Berkeley Statistics and EECS has compiled, cleaned and continues to update a large corpus of hospital- and county-level data from a variety of public sources to aid data science efforts to combat COVID-19. At the hospital level, our data include the location of the hospital, the number of ICU beds, the total number of employees, and the hospital type.
Professor Bin Yu and her team are developing models to connect hospitals with needed supplies. Their work with the nonprofit organization Response4Life is described in this news article from the College of Engineering.
The new Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS) received an anonymous $252 million anchor gift for the construction of the Data Hub building. The Data Hub, on the site of the old Tolman building, will be the brick-and-mortar home of data science on campus.
Lecturer - Department of Statistics
University of California, Berkeley
The Department of Statistics at UC Berkeley invites applications for a pool of qualified temporary instructors to teach the following courses should an opening arise. Screening of applicants is ongoing and will continue as needed. The number of positions varies from semester to semester including summer sessions, depending upon the needs of the Department. Positions may range from 33% to 100% time.
The newest release of the H2O software was named after Bin Yu: H2O v3.28, code name “Yu”.
H2O.ai (https://www.h2o.ai) is a company that provides an open-source distributed computing platform for AI.
Congratulations Bin on this cool honor!
Associate Provost and Dean Chayes and EVCP Alivisatos announced the official name of the Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society.