Welcome to Statistics and Actuarial Science

From May 2–4, the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science hosted the 2025 American Statistical Association (ASA) DataFest: an international data analysis challenge where teams of undergraduates work intensively to “find and share meaning in a large, rich, and complex data set.” This year, 130 students across 30 teams started the competition, with only 17 teams able to complete DataFest’s rigorous 48-hour challenge.

The winning teams were:

• Best Insight: Huatieloo Data Masters

• Best Use of External Data: BBGS

• Best Visualization: Team B

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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!