🆕 New ✨ semester ✨ , new pub! Ciaran Evans (Assistant Teaching Prof) and Nicole Dalzell (Associate Teaching Prof) recently published a new music-inspired study in the Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education with collaborators from Colgate University and Furman University.

✈️ Next week, our faculty, students, and alums are headed to Nashville for the 2025 Joint Statistical Meetings! They will be presenting their research, receiving awards, and serving the statistical community. 🗺️ Keep an eye on this page for upcoming details on where to catch Wake Stat!

🆕 New week, new pub! @sarahlotspeich.bsky.social (Assistant Professor) co-authored a recently published study in Gender Issues (Springer Nature) with collaborators from Syracuse University, Hofstra University, and University of Guelph. 🔗 doi.org/10.1007/s121...

👏 Huge congratulations to Associate Professor and Associate Chair Staci Hepler, who is the 2025 recipient of the Michael Woodroofe Award from the Caucus for Women in Statistics and Data Science!

👏 We're so excited to hear that M.S. Alum Xinyu Zhang (now a PhD Candidate in Statistics at Ohio State) has won a Student Paper Award from the @amstatnews.bsky.social Section on Bayesian Statistical Sciences! 🔗 Read more: stat.osu.edu/news/xinyu-z...

Associate Professor @lucystats.bsky.social spoke today at the “Character Across the Curriculum” workshop about the importance of curiosity in the era of artificial intelligence — part of @wakeforest.bsky.social Educating Character Initiative and the Program for Leadership and Character

🆕 New week, new pub! Mostafa Shams, Ph.D. (Teacher-Scholar Postdoc) is a coauthor on a recently published study in JAMA Network Open with collaborators from Allegheny Health Network and Wellstar Paulding Medical Center. 🔗 jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

👏 Earlier this month, Associate Teaching Professor Nicole Dalzell was invited to present "Mentoring Matters: Tips for Research and Writing with Mentees of all Levels" at the 2025 Southern Region Council on Statistics (SRCOS) in Jekyll Island, Georgia. Awesome work!

👏 Last week Professor Kenneth Berenhaut was invited to present his research on "Distance, density and cohesion in clustering" at the Classification Society's Annual Meeting in Ottawa, Canada. Well done!

👏 Huge congratulations to Assistant Prof @sarahlotspeich.bsky.social Lotspeich for her Societal Impact Award from the @cwstat.bsky.social! Dr. Lotspeich is being recognized for her outstanding efforts and impact on social justice through your collaboration, leadership, and partnerships.

🆕 Check out this new article in @hbr.org written by @lucystats.bsky.social (Assistant Prof) and Jeff Camm (Prof in @wakeforest.bsky.social School of Business) demystifying the use of percentages in statistics. Read more ⬇️

🆕 Courtney Di Vittorio's research (Affiliate Faculty) was highlighted by NASA! Her project on Louisiana's wetlands engaged students from all over @wakeforest.bsky.social, including two of Wake Stats Masters Alums, Melita Wiles and Saeed Movahedi! Read more: earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/15430...

What a weekend of celebrations at @wakeforest.bsky.social! 🧑‍🎓 On Saturday, we celebrated the hooding of our seven incredible masters students. 🏠 On Sunday, we hosted our graduates and their families for our department open house. 🧑‍🎓 Today, we continue by celebrating our many amazing undergraduates.

Happy Graduation Weekend from the @wakeforeststats.bsky.social faculty!!

Let’s go, grads! 👏 Excited for our marvelous MS grads to get hooded at @wakeforest.bsky.social this afternoon.

🤩 Yesterday, five of our @wakeforest.bsky.social undergraduates shared their statistics honors thesis research. We enjoyed learning about their great work!

📈 Leveling up! It's official! Drs. Lucy D'Agostino McGowan (@lucystats.bsky.social) and Emily Huang have been promoted to the rank of Associate Professor (with tenure). We are so proud of you and lucky to call you both colleagues!

🏔️ This week, Wake Stats is heading to Salt Lake City for the 2025 ASA Symposium on Data Science & Statistics! 🎤 Dr. Noah Gade (Assistant Prof) will discuss a novel measure of functional connectivity using permutations, with applications to neuronal response data.

👏 Last Friday, Nikolas Lindauer successfully defended his M.S. thesis in Statistics at @wakeforest.bsky.social! Congratulations to Nikolas and his incredible advisor, Dr. Staci Hepler, on an impact-driven project that showcased the stats while keeping North Carolinians' health at the forefront.

⚾️ Today senior John Nelson presented his research on "Quality and Longevity of MLB Pitchers Post-Tommy John Surgery" to his colleagues in the SESH Lab! He has worked with Dr. Staci Hepler (Assoc Prof/Vice Chair) on it. Next week he'll be starting his new job at #InmarIntelligence! Go, Jack!

👏 Huge congratulations to Dr. Lynne Yengulalp (Associate Prof), who was recognized yesterday with a @wakeforest.bsky.social "Thrive Dimension Champion Award," recognizing excellence demonstrated through programming, teaching, or other collaborative efforts within the Wake community.

🆕 New week, new pub! @sarahlotspeich.bsky.social (Assistant Prof) published in Statistics in Medicine with @wakeforest.bsky.social colleagues @ashleymullan.bsky.social (MS alum, now PhDing @vanderbilt.edu), @lucystats.bsky.social (Assistant Prof), and Staci Hepler (Vice Chair/Associate Prof).

🎉 Congratulations to Celine Su (BS Student), recipient of the 2025 Undergraduate Award for Academic Achievement in the Statistical Sciences.

🎙️ This afternoon Nikolas Lindauer (BS from Rice University) will defend his M.S. thesis in Statistics entitled "Modeling Legal Strategies for Opioid Harm Reduction in North Carolina," advised by Dr. Staci Hepler (Vice Chair, Associate Professor). Go, Nikolas!

🎉 Congratulations to Tara Laux (MS Student), recipient of the 2025 Graduate Student Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Statistical Sciences for exceptional contributions which enrich the department and grad program through scholarship, ingenuity and dedication.

👏 We are so excited to welcome Bhramar Mukherjee to @wakeforest.bsky.social / Wake Forest SOM this week for our 3rd Annual Distinguished Lectureship in Statistics and Biostatistics! Faculty and students can't wait to hear about "The Importance of Statistical Thinking in an AI-Augmented World."

👏 Dr. Collin Cademartori (Assistant Prof) will be discussing some of his incredible pedagogical tools made in R Shiny!

🆕 This week, we're celebrating new publications from two of our Wake Forest teacher-scholars in the Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education! Drs. Ciaran Evans and @lucystats.bsky.social (both assistant profs) propose novel pedagogical tools for teaching regression and data wrangling in R.

🎙️ Today at 2:00 PM (Central) Jihyeon Kwon (Masters Alum, now a Biostatistics PhD candidate at Drexel University) will discuss a flexible spatial modeling approach to prevent "oversmoothing" over space at #ENAR2025. See more 👇

🎙️ Today at 3:00 PM (Central) Abhi Jain (Masters Alum, now a Biostatistics PhD student Boston University) will share a spatial Bayesian beta regression model for well-being at #ENAR2025. See more 👇

🎙️ Today at 11:30 AM (Central) @sarahlotspeich.bsky.social (Assistant Prof) will be discussing an imputation solution to accurately and efficiently measure access to healthy foods and its relationship to obesity at #ENAR2025. See more 👇

🎙️ Today at 8:30 AM (Central) @lucystats.bsky.social (Assistant Prof) will be discussing missing covariates and the nuances of when and "why" the outcome sometimes has to be included to impute them at #ENAR2025. See more 👇

🎙️ Catch Ashley Mullan (Masters Alum) and Cassandra Hung (Undergrad Researcher) at tonight's #ENAR2025 poster session (8-11PM CT). Ashley will discuss visualizing cost-effectiveness for cancer treatment, and Cassandra's work evaluates the impact of measurement error on health disparities models.

Happy Women's History Month! Today we're featuring Dr. Sarah Lotspeich, an assistant professor of statistics at Wake Forest University! Her favorite statistic is the observed-data log-likelihood for missing data, and she enjoys travel, reading, and board games! #ENAR2025

🎷 Next week, Wake Stats is heading to New Orleans for the 2025 Eastern North American Region (ENAR) Spring Meeting! Six of our incredible faculty, students, and alums will be sharing their research. Stay tuned for details on each of their presentations!

🆕 New week, new pub! Dan Beavers (Associate Professor / Graduate Coordinator) coauthored a recent study in Social Science and Medicine with researchers from Purdue University, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center.

👏 Last week we were lucky enough to host Dr. Anarina Murillo from @brownpublichealth.bsky.social Department of Biostatistics for Colloquium. She discussed strategies to incorporate advanced topics like measurement error and developing statistical thinking into intro courses. Thank you for visiting!

👏 Huge congratulations to Assistant Prof @lucystats.bsky.social for her Emerging Leader Award from the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies!

👏 Last month, undergraduate researcher Jiacheng (Kimi) Ni had the opportunity to discuss his research with Dr. Kenneth Berenhaut (Professor) with Wake Forest University's Board of Trustees. Congrats!!

🎉 Last night two of our faculty attended the NC ASA Annual Dinner to hear from Ron Wasserstein about improbability, mingle, and receive awards! Robert Erhardt (Chair and Prof) received the Senior Statistician Award and @sarahlotspeich.bsky.social (Assistant Prof) received the Service Award.

🌶️ 🏆 On Friday, there was a chili cook-off between faculty from the stat and math departments at @WakeForest. Congratulations to our very own Graduate Coordinator, Associate Prof Dan Beavers for taking home the title! Thanks to all the students who came out to judge!

🎳 Flashback Friday! Earlier this year, our MS students and faculty kicked off the new semester with a bowling celebration! The scores had plenty of variability, but a good time was had by all. #SmallDepartmentBigImpact #SmallDepartmentBigFun

👏 Congratulations to Chair and Prof Robert Erhardt on winning the 2025 Senior Statistician Award from the NC Chapter of the American Statistical Association! The award is given annually to a chapter member who has made significant contributions to the theory and/or the practice of statistics.

🎉 New week, new pub! Staci Hepler (Assoc Chair/Assoc Prof) and David Kline (Affiliate Faculty) are coauthors on a recent paper in EPIDEMIOLOGY. They collaborated with researchers from New York University, RAND, and Columbia University to analyze med-assisted treatment and opioid overdose deaths.

🎉 New week, new pub! The first 2025 issue of Biostatistics features work by Wake Forest University Stats! Eva Murphy (Teacher-Scholar Postdoc), David Kline (Affiliate Faculty), and Staci Hepler (Assoc Chair/Assoc Prof) propose understanding the opioid syndemic through factor modeling.

🎉 Congratulations to Dela Akpalu (MS Student), who has been selected as the recipient of the 2025 Department of Statistical Sciences Distinguished Teaching Assistant Award. This award is given annually by our faculty "for excellence in teaching and a dedication to peer education." Awesome work!

🎉 New week, new pubs! This month's issue of the @amjepi.bsky.social features two articles coauthored by Wake Stats faculty. 🧵

👏 On Monday we kicked off our spring colloquia with Dr. Ana Ortega-Villa from NIH. She spoke with us about vaccine mechanisms of action, Poisson distribution, constructing novel maximum likelihood estimators, @enar-ibs.bsky.social Fostering Diversity in Biostatistics Workshop, and more!

🆕 Ending the week with the first new pub of the new year! Affiliate Faculty Dr. Courtney Di Vittorio was recently published in Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment, with other Wake Stats grad students and visiting faculty as co-authors.

🖐️ There are five days left to apply to our M.S. in Statistics program at @wakeforest.bsky.social! Our teacher-scholar faculty would love to review your apps to join our small, collaborative program with thesis/non-thesis routes, generous funding opps, optional data science cert, and more!