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September 11, 2018, was the dedication of UC Berkeley's newest residence hall named after renown UC Berkeley Statistics Professor David Harold Blackwell. The ceremony took place in front of the new residence hall, which is now filled with first year students who moved in August 14th, 2018. The ceremony was attended by members of the Blackwell family, faculty and staff of the Statistics Department, members of the UC Berkeley administration, and staff from the residence hall community.

David Blackwell Hall, the first new residence hall to open at UC Berkeley since 2012, is a living space for more than 700 students full of patios, study rooms, bike racks, ping-pong tables, exercise machines and — if you’re lucky enough to live on the west side of the building — million-dollar views of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco skyline.

The Statistics department is pleased to announce that Professor Deborah Nolan, current Department Chair, has been selected by the American Statistical Associate as this year's recipient of the Waller Award for Distinguished Teaching Career. Professor Nolan is well deserving of this prestigious award for her many contributions to the teaching in Statistics Department and at UC Berkeley.

We are delighted to share that Statistics Professor Bin Yu has been chosen by the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies, COPSS, as the recipient of the prestigious Elizabeth L. Scott Award. Professor Yu is being acknowledged for her dedicated and commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the statistics field and for her mentorship of women students.

Laura Slakey, the MSO of the Statistics Department, was selected once again to receive an Excellence in Management award from the Berkeley Staff Assembly committee for 2018. Congratulations Laura!

This year's commencement was a wonderful celebration for all those who participated, whether it was students, parents, faculty or staff. We had more students participate than even before in our graduation ceremony which took place at Zellerbach Playhouse on Monday, May 14th, 2018.

The University Medal is one of the most competitive and prestigious awards given to a graduating senior at UC Berkeley. To qualify students must embody the mission and message of the university, have made a meaningful impact on their community, overcome significant personal obstacles, and maintained a 3.96 GPA or better. 

We are excited to share that the team behind Project Jupyter has been awarded the ACM Software System Award. The team includes Statistics faculty member Fernando Perez. Professor Perez was one of the original developers of iPython, the program from which Project Jupyter has its roots. Project Jupyter has been revolutionary and its open collaborative platform allows users to create tools for interactive computing.

Prof. Ani Adhikari has been invited to give the Last Lecture by UC Berkeley Senior Class Council 2018, along with Prof. Darren Zook of Political Science. From the article:

With the NBA final getting under way, check out this youtube video featuring Professor Lisa Goldberg as she discusses her paper digging deeper into the theory of the hot hand. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPZFQ6i759g

Congratulations to Jianbo Chen who was awarded the Citadel Student Fellowship 2018-19!  Citadel generously supports an annual graduate student fellowship. This competitive fellowship provides a year of support to an exceptional PhD graduate student within the department.

Professor Steve Evans has been selected by UNC- Chapel Hill's Department of Statistics & Operations Research as the 2018 Hotelling speaker. As the Hotelling speaker Professor Evans will give two lectures next week at UNC- Chapel Hill. Here's a link to the article on UNC's website, https://stat-or.unc.edu/archives/3484.

Congratulations to PhD student Olivia Angiuli who has been awarded the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship! The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship 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 United States institutions.

Berkeley News reported that UC Berkeley will offer Data 8, the fastest growing course in university history, for free online. This is another way UC Berkeley takes its mission to serve the public seriously and provides the community with free access to amazing courses.

Monday March 12th 2018 was our 6th Berkeley Statistics Research Annual Symposium. It was a fantastic event with over 100 attendees comprise of faculty, graduate students, post-docs, and industry partners. There were 16 UCB PhD & post-doc thunder talks as well as 6 talks from Statistics Department IAP members. The talks were followed by a lively poster session with 21 posters from UCB PhD & post-docs.

Prof. Michael Jordan has been named a Plenary Lecturer at the 2018 International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Rio de Janeiro. This honor has been bestowed on only a small handful of statisticians over the hundred-year history of the ICM.

From the announcement:

Bin Yu and Ben Brown's grant is featured in the news release:

The university made an exciting announcement that a new dorm will be named after Emeritus Statistics Professor David Blackwell. Professor Blackwell was the first African-American tenured faculty member at UC Berkeley. The Statistics Department is happy to share that his memory will live on and incoming students will learn about him by living in a building named after him.

The Bayesian Statistical Science Section announced the outcome of their 2018 student paper competition.  They had forty entrants and UCB Statistics Ph.D. student Ryan Giordano was one of ten who was selected to receive a travel award to attend the JSM in Vancouver this coming July.