Bear Beginnings
On August 19, 2025, SDS took part in "Bear Beginnings", an open house hosted by individual departments during the larger Arts & Sciences undergraduate orientation. This open house is an opportunity for incoming freshmen to learn more about different departments and their majors. Dozens of freshmen came to SDS with interest in our major and minor offerings in statistics and in data science.
Department Welcome Party
In September 2025, the department came together at the Boathouse in Forest Park for an afternoon of refreshments and each other's company. This was an especially exciting event, giving the existing students and faculty the opportunity to get to know our incoming cohort of graduate students.
ASA Statistics Day
ASA Statistics Day was hosted at Washington University in St. Louis on September 19th, 2025. This event was open to Undergraduate and Graduate students and Postdocs from local chapters of the ASA, and from local universities. The event started with opening remarks from William Acree (Vice Dean of Interdisciplinary Initiatives and Innovation, Washington University in St Louis), Bo Li (Stanley A. Sawyer Professor in Statistics and Data Science, and Co-director of TRIADS, Washington University in St Louis), and Bhaskar Bhattacharya (President of the ASA St. Louis Chapter and Professor and Department Head of Statistics, University of Nebraska–Lincoln).
Programming included talks from Scott Holan (University of Missouri and the U.S. Census Bureau), and Byron Yount (Mercy St. Louis). Attendees were also given the opportunity to ask questions during a career panel, moderated by SDS PhD student Gifty Osei. The career panel featured speaker Scott Holan, along with Tim Huang (Google), Daphne Lew (Washington University School of Medicine), Kirk Remund (Bayer), and Subash Kashyap (Nestlé Purina North America). The day ended with a ten person Poster Competition, judged by Luke Settles (Natera), Chiyu Gu (Bayer), and Gayla Olbricht (Missouri S&T). First-place went to Abhisek Banerjee (Mizzou) for "Unraveling the Effects of Monetary Policy: A Combined Approach of Statistical Identification and Economic Prior Knowledge". Second-place went to SDS’ own PhD Candidate Wei Li, for "Age-mismatched functional network model limit outcome prediction performance in developing populations".
Graduate Student Seminars
During the Fall 2025 semester, PhD Students Shourjo Chakraborty and Hangcen Zou organized four presentations for the department from SDS PhD student speakers: Sayan Das, Hangcen Zou, Zitian Zhou, and Wei Li. They also hosted two postdoctoral speakers: Subhrajyoty Roy from SDS, and Claudia Carroll from TRIADS.
Fall Potluck
The week before Thanksgiving, the SDS staff hosted our second annual Fall Potluck. This year, they added a trivia game, with categories about St. Louis, WashU, Thanksgiving, and the department, just to name a few. Everyone showed up and showed out- bringing their favorite foods to share.
Holiday Party
In December 2025, faculty, staff, postdocs, and graduate students from SDS gathered with their family and friends in Holmes Lounge for the department holiday party. After a busy semester, everyone enjoyed the time to catch up with each other over holiday treats.
To keep up with the Department of Statistics & Data Science, please visit our News page. To learn about our upcoming events, please visit the departments Events page.
