In the midst of a pandemic and the uncharted territory it has brought us to, we are delighted to announce some wonderful news as well. While we are still engaged in a very competitive hiring campaign, we can already report the addition of four talented colleagues to our department. We look forward to working with our brilliant new faculty members and warmly welcome them to our team. Additional hiring news will be reported in the next issue of Liaison.
 

Rohan Alexander 
Rohan Alexander will be joining the University of Toronto's Department of Statistical Sciences and the Faculty of Information in July 2020 as an assistant professor. He looks forward to contributing to both areas and strengthening the ties between statistics and the iSchool. Rohan's research interests include questions in social sciences, such as: Are our politicians actually representing us? Do elections matter? How can we make political polling better? Rohan earned his PhD in Economics from the Australian National University. His work has been published in the Journal of Economic History.

Samantha-Jo Caetano
Samantha-Jo Caetano will be joining the University of Toronto's Department of Statistical Sciences as an assistant professor, teaching stream, in July 2020. Samantha is currently in the process of completing her PhD at McMaster University, with her PhD research focusing on measuring concordance of time-to-event models. Over the last 4 years Samantha has lectured and coordinated multiple large first- and second-year statistics courses at both the University of Toronto (Mississauga) and McMaster University. Samantha is passionate about statistical outreach and improving student mental health. She has hosted multiple statistical workshops, partnered with WISE (Women in Science & Engineering), for high school, undergraduate, and graduate students. Her most recent workshop focused on the usage of relative risk to assess the point source of epidemiological outbreaks.
Read more here about a recent workshop she held to introduce students to the role of statistics in tracking outbreaks and epidemics. 

 

Jessica (Jesse) Gronsbell
Jesse Gronsbell will be joining the University of Toronto's Department of Statistical Sciences in July 2020 as an assistant professor. She works in biostatistics, with a focus on the development of statistical methods for electronic health records and mobile health data. Jesse earned her PhD in Biostatistics from Harvard University, where she was supported by a Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Award from the National Institutes of Health. Her work has been recognized with a Young Researchers Award from the International Society of Nonparametric Statistics and a Gertrude Cox Scholarship honourable mention from the American Statistical Association.

Jun Young Park
Jun Young Park will be joining the University of Toronto’s Department of Statistical Sciences and the Department of Psychology as an assistant professor in July 2020. Jun’s research interests include modelling correlated data and applying resampling for statistical inference. He has worked on developing statistical methods for a wide range of biomedical science including neuroimaging (MRI/fMRI), behaviour genetics, and cancer genomics; he is passionate about further expanding his area of research. As an applied statistician, he expects to contribute to science through collaborations with faculty, students, and researchers. He is currently in the process of completing his PhD in Biostatistics at the University of Minnesota. 

By Radu Craiu