News
December
Li Zhou selected to receive the 2026 K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award from AAC&U
12/18/2025
DMS PhD student in the Statistics and Data Science program Li Zhou has been selected to receive the 2026 K. Patricia Cross Future Leaders Award from AAC&U. This is a highly competitive international award, with only six graduate students worldwide selected this year.
This well-deserved recognition reflects Li’s strong commitment to teaching and learning, equity, and community engagement. She is advised by Dr. Elvan Ceyhan and will be recognized at the AAC&U Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, in January 2026.
Please congratulate Li and Elvan on this fantastic achievement. We are very proud of Li and excited to see her continued impact.
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12/16/2025
A team led by DMS assistant professor JooChul Lee had their work accepted to the 2026 American Soccer Insights Summit, a soccer analytics conference bringing together researchers and analysts from professional teams, media outlets, and universities—two years in a row. The presentation is titled “Optimal Defensive Movement Against Counterattacks.”
The team includes Isaac Araoz (Applied Discrete Mathematics), John Daniels (Biomedical Sciences), and Tzu-Ying Chen (Statistics). One of the undergraduate students will present the work to a mixed industry and academic audience.
Congratulations to JooChul and to the students on this excellent accomplishment!
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12/12/2025
DMS associate professor Luke Oeding has been invited to be a plenary speaker at the 2026 SIAM Annual Meeting in Cleveland, Ohio. This recognizes his contributions in nonlinear algebra and his service within SIAM.
Congratulations, Luke, on this great honor!
The full list of plenary speakers is here.
For more information on the meeting, click here.
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12/04/2025
Jingyi “Ginny” Zheng, an associate professor of mathematics and statistics, builds statistical and machine-learning tools that help collaborators see what their data truly contains. From cardiac imaging and brain-connectivity mapping to working-dog genetics and veterinary telemedicine, Zheng develops methods that translate complex datasets into clearer insight, always starting with the human question behind the numbers.
For more, read this
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12/01/2025
Dr. Nedret Billor has been selected as the Interim Chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. She will formally begin serving as Interim Chair effective January 1, 2026.
Dr. Schenck will continue in the role of Acting Chair through the end of the calendar year and will remain as the primary academic officer for DMS until then. Dr. Billor will begin her administrative appointment on December 1 in order to ensure continuity and to be able to engage in leadership conversations among Dr. Schenck, DMS, and the Dean’s office through the month of December.
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