News

While in high school, Solomiya Kovalenko planned on an English major, but her plans changed after clicking with statistics during an Advanced Placement (AP) course.

The Department of Statistics welcomed faculty, undergraduate and graduate students, staff, retirees, and families to the annual International Dinner and Talent Show on October 24 at Labyrinth Coffee in Ames.

Lindy Huynh initially chose Iowa State University for its innovative reputation. Now a junior with double majors in finance and economics, she also has three minors – statistics, data science, and computer science.

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) students were part of the the LAS High Impact Research Experience Award.

Emily Allen enjoyed statistics starting in high school, appreciating it as a more applied version of math. One of her favorite parts was “using statistics to make decisions for real world problems.”

Professor Cindy Yu, as PI, and Professor Zhengyuan Zhu, as Co-PI, have received a $420,000 award from the U.S.

Caleb Barnhart is a junior majoring in statistics and pursuing an actuarial science certificate. However, his first year at Iowa State University was not within the Department of Statistics.

Assistant professor Xiang Ji is part of the Iowa Firefighter Cancer Prevention and Exposure Reduction Program research team. His role is to assist with statistical analysis and software development.

Yongming Qu, who received statistics degrees in 2000 (M.S.) and 2002 (Ph.D.), received the Department of Statistics Outstanding Alumni Award on October 1, 2026.

Associate professor Somak Dutta is the recipient and principal investigator (PI) of a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, titled "CDS&E New Matrix-free Computation for Large Scale Spatial Analysis."

Lauren Kwon started her college career with a goal of becoming a data scientist as a statistics major. She enjoyed solving math problems and began taking computer science courses in order to add coding to her skillset. 

A new paper by Department of Statistics assistant professor Kyle Schindl and Zach Branson in the Journal of the American Statistical Association brings a broad family of experimental designs into one geom

Akshat Valse is a sophomore with four majors (data science, statistics, mathematics, and computer science). Valse started as a data science major and is part of the University Honors Program.

Mark Kaiser (second author) and Dan Nordman (third author) have been published in the Journal of the American Statistical Association (JASA). Their article, published with Haihan Yu ('23 Ph.D.

Jordan Pelkmans is the new Statistical Consulting Manager for the Department of Statistics Consulting Group. She started in September 2026. 

Professor Cindy Yu and her coauthors have published their paper, “Fundamental Anomalies,” in Management Science. This marks Professor Yu’s fourth publication in this premier journal.

Each year, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) presents awards to outstanding alumni and friends of the College.