SMU Department of Statistics and Data Science

?? We're #hiring a faculty lecturer for Statistics and Data Science! Learn more at https://lnkd.in/g6vPf8va

The second season of the MSDS Speaker Series is coming your way! Please join us, starting November 13, to hear some titans in the industry speak on various exciting topics across the vast data science spectrum, including aviation, the arts, academia, and rapidly-changing Gen AI! Visit our SDS site to register for all of these talks: https://lnkd.in/gnhpTkyZ All the lectures are hybrid, but those who attend in person can participate in the networking reception a half hour before the lecture begins. These talks are open to all students, alumni, faculty and community members!

The SMU Statistics and Data Science Department, in collaboration with the O'Donnell Data Science and Research Computing Institute, are hosting a workshop on Statistical Methods For Complex and High-dimensional Data! The workshop will feature presentations from eight professors from universities in Texas, California, Iowa, and South Dakota! For more information and a detailed schedule, please visit: https://lnkd.in/gjZhCizj

?? We're #hiring! The SMU Department of Statistics and Data Science is very excited to announce that our faculty team is looking to grow! Open-Rank Professor: https://lnkd.in/gJjD4pAe Assistant Professor: https://lnkd.in/gRZmeGxp Professor and Frensley Endowed Chair: https://lnkd.in/gj6W-KYM

Congratulations to our very own Dr. Charles South, who was recently voted at the Chair-Elect for the Statistics in Sports Section of the American Statistical Association! We are very excited for the future of the Statistics in Sports Section with Dr. South at the helm!

MSDS's Summer Immersion was a blast! Thanks to these incredible panelists for their spirited conversation and inspiring our students. Looking forward to the next one already! Whamo!

Join us TONIGHT (4/25) at 8PM central for the second installment of our MSDS Lecture Series, featuring SMU Lyle professor David Brauchler on Data Ethics. Zoom link: https://lnkd.in/gPUxMfBr

MSDS Speaker Series # 2! DATA ETHICS! Please join us, Thursday, April 25th from 8pm to 9pm CST on Zoom! Our speaker will be SMU Lyle School of Engineering Professor and Popular Spotify Podcaster, Dr. David Brauchler. The title of his talk is: "Decisions & Dilemmas: The Whitehat Hacker's Guide to Cyberspace" AND ... The room will open at 7:30pm CST for students and alumni that would like to have some time to catch up! See you there!

And just like that, DataFest is a wrap! Huge congratulations to all our participants on a fantastic job and a big round of applause to our finalists and winners! BEST INSIGHT: Linear Longhorns BEST VISUALIZATION: Polygraphers BEST USE OF STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: Jordan Lovers OTHER FINALISTS: Metric Mavericks, Team Gurls, and Graph-Out Loud A big thank-you to our cosponsors from this year: Department of Statistics and Data Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, UT Dallas American Statistical Association - ASA - North Texas Chapter

DataFest @ Southern Methodist University update: WOW (long post, but please read)! This is our 6th year to host a section of the American Statistical Association - ASA DataFest competition (we are hosting April 12-14). Historically, we have seen incremental growth and have had anywhere from 50-75 students from universities across Texas participate. So, we planned for that. Much to our surprise, we received registration from a WHOPPING 121 participants from 10 universities... almost double our previous high! Though we met our initial fundraising goal, that was for projecting 50-75. The SMU Department of Statistics and Data Science has never shied away from a challenge, but we need help from alumni, statistics/data science professionals, and companies in the DFW area. We would like to ask for help in one of three ways: 1) To any interested parties: please consider making a donation. Because we have almost double the number of expected participants, our costs are almost doubled. We have been able to reduce our cost-per-student by choosing food and t-shirt vendors more carefully, but we are still thousands of dollars short. The ASA has generously set up a gift fund, so that donors have an easy way to support the event and get a receipt for tax purposes. You can donate here:?https://lnkd.in/gKzNh_6v. 2) To alumni and industry professionals: please consider donating your valuable time, either as a mentor or judge. We rely heavily on our own graduate students and faculty to serve as mentors over the course of the weekend, but that won't be enough! Currently, we have 13 mentors registered for the entire weekend; ideally, we would have about double that amount. Mentoring is important, and easy! You only need to volunteer 2 hours of time, and the teams really enjoy having professionals to lean on. If you wish to judge, the commitment would be from roughly 11:30am on Sunday until 2:30pm on Sunday. You can sign up to volunteer here:?https://lnkd.in/g5u8ccwf. 3) To any interested parties: consider sharing 1) and 2) with your networks - in particular, your employers. If we were able to find 4-5 corporate sponsors who could cover the cost of a meal (we provide 6 over the course of the weekend), most of our budget windfall would be covered instantaneously. We would be happy to allow corporate sponsors to come hand out swag, speak to the entire group, or come to some other agreement to acknowledge a generous gift. While this is an unprecedented challenge (from a resource perspective) for our department, we are ready and willing to handle it! A little support from our community will go a long way to helping us serve these motivated and talented undergraduate students. Please feel free to reach out to me directly or via email ([email protected]) if you have questions about the event!