The fourteenth annual Canadian Statistics Student Conference (CSSC) took place on Saturday, May 30th, 2026 at McMaster University in Hamilton. 

The booklet for the CSSC 2026, which includes all abstracts, details about our sessions, and other relevant information is available here. 

Pictures of the event, taken by Peter Macdonald, are available here. Pictures of the event by Shiyao Ying are available here.

Scientific Program Results

French Presentation Award 

Students who presented in French during the event were eligible for a $50 prize. The winner was Hani Zaki. The results of the competitions for presentation awards are below:

The results of the competitions for presentation awards are below:

Bachelor’s - Oral Presentation

1. Sandra Huang, Extending Hammock Plots for mixed Data Visualization in Python
2. Aditya Khan, RESAPLE: An Approximate One-Step Restricted Likelihood Estimator of Spatial Dependence for Exploratory Spatial Analysis
3. Jonathan Channer, Basketball Scoring Risk Landscapes via Random-Trace Tomography

Master’s - Oral Presentation

1. Alexia Furtado, Reducing Dimensionality and Multicollinearity in K-mer Data Using Correlation-Based Clustering and Penalized Regression
2. Zoya Zaman, A Spatiotemporal Analysis of Extreme Fire Weather in British Columbia: Identifying a Structural Change Point from 1981 to 2023
3. Duncan Cameron-Steinke, Nonlinear Covariate Integration in Hidden Markov Models Using Evidential Deep Learning

PhD - Oral Presentation

1. Niki Petrakos, A Framework for Generating Realistic Synthetic Tabular Data in a Randomized Controlled Trial Setting
2. Xuan Li, Fast Total Variation Denoising for Poisson Spike-Train Intensity Estimation
3. Md Hasan, Statistical Modelling of Spatial Heterogeneity in Pneumonia Across Manitoba

Bachelor’s - Poster Presentation

1. Christopher Richard, Spatially Analyzing Mortality of Youth Aged 20-24 as a Response to Mental Health Predictors
2. Yuwen Zhang, Uncertainty-Aware Decision Making in Chess Using Conformal Prediction and Search Based Algorithms
3. Fanshi Lin, Optimizing the Cost-Effectiveness of Cancer Screening Strategies with Fewer Simulations.

Master’s - Poster Presentation

1. Heshani Tirimadura Mendis, Flexible Tree Ensembles: Data Adaptive Splitting Rule
2. Hani Zaki, Efficiency Gain of Covariate-Adjusted Differential Variance Estimators in Randomized Controlled Trials
3. Vinay Joshy, Sparse Group LASSO in Finite Mixture Regression Models

PhD - Poster Presentation

1. Siying Ma, Learning Data-Efficient and Generalizable Neural Operators via Fundamental Physics Knowledge
2. Shiyu Xu, Change Point Detection for Growth Rate in the Early Stage of Epidemics using the Hidden Markov Model
3. Olayinka Arimoro, Unsupervised Graded Response Models for Assessing Longitudinal Measurement Invariance in Patient-Reported Outcomes

Keynote Address

The keynote address was delivered by Dr. Grace Y. Yi, of the University of Western Ontario’s Department of Statistical and Actuarial Sciences. Dr. Yi spoke about the hidden distortion of measurement error in ultrahigh-dimensional data. Please see the Keynote Speech Slides.

Career Panel

Participants had the opportunity to attend a career Q&A session featuring Dr. Anna Heath, (University of Toronto), Dr. David Earn (McMaster University), Dr. Ben Bolker (McMaster University).

Scientific Workshop

Dr. Kuan Liu,Tier II Canada Research Chair and Assistant Professor at the Institute of Health Policy, Management & Evaluation at the University of Toronto, led a tutorial on Bayesian Methods for Causal Effect Estimation. Please see the Workshop slides and Workshop code.

Contact Us

For more information, please contact the SSC Student Conference organizing committee at ssc.student.conference@gmail.com.

We would also like to thank our sponsors: