Welcome to Statistics and Actuarial Science

Read the full announcement on the SSC website.

Congratulations Liyuan Lin, winner of the 2025 Pierre Robillard Award from the Statistical Society of Canada for her PhD thesis, "Measures for risk, dependence and diversification,". Her work, completed at the University of Waterloo, focused on quantitative risk management, introduces a novel diversification index and spans finance, actuarial science, and statistics, demonstrating both theoretical depth and practical impact. Lin is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Business School at Monash University, Australia.

The Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science is pleased to congratulate the University of Waterloo team on their success at the 2025 Munich Re Cup this March. The Munich Re Cup is the premier actuarial science student case competition in North America, with a total of $20,000 of prize money handed out each year.

Out of 20 initial teams, the University of Waterloo team, consisting of actuarial science students Sue Liu, Bernice Xiao, Yue Zheng, and faculty advisor Emily Kozlowski, was selected as one of the six finalist teams that competed at the two-day in-person final round of the case competition in Toronto.

At the in-person competition the Waterloo team competed against five other teams coming from top-tier actuarial programs across North America on this year’s case topics of Longevity Risk and a comprehensive strategy to break into the Pension Risk Transfer (PRT) market. The University of Waterloo team delivered an impressive performance, winning third place and $4000 of prize money. Congratulations on this well-earned achievement!

Read the full version on the Faculty of Math website.

Austin Riis-Due’s actuarial journey began in high school on a whim, studying for his first exam with a friend. By the time he graduated from The University of Texas at Austin, he had passed seven Society of Actuaries (SOA) exams. Now, at just 24, Riis-Due has achieved Fellowship in the SOA—an honor typically earned much later in an actuary’s career—while pursuing a PhD in Actuarial Science & Quantitative Finance at the University of Waterloo.

Austin credits his success to Waterloo’s top-tier program and mentorship from his PhD advisors, Professors David Landriault and Bin Li, as well as Professor Yi Shen. His passion for mathematics and risk modeling has led him to global collaborations, research papers, and conferences across Europe and Africa.

Beyond academics, he cherishes the actuarial community’s tight-knit network, the ability to solve real-world financial challenges, and his deep-rooted love for Texas Longhorns football. With a bright future ahead, Riis-Due continues to push the boundaries of actuarial science while inspiring the next generation of scholars.