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News in 2025
We are very pleased to announce that Qurat ul Ain Gul is the winner of our inaugural 'Head of Department's Commendation for Outstanding Contribution to the Department of Statistics' prize! This prize was awarded in recognition of the student’s overall notable achievements within the Department of Statistics. Huge congratulations!
We are pleased to announce that we have been kindly donated the following prizes by Winton. Our Head of Department Professor Milan Vojnović would like to thank Winton for these donations and the Department of Statistics is extremely thankful for their continued support. A huge congratulations to the students who have worked hard and have been awarded the prizes below.
Prize: Winton Prize for Academic Excellence in MSc Statistics/MSc Statistics (Financial Statistics) and MSc Statistics (Social Statistics). This prize was awarded to the student with the highest overall mark in their assessments. One prize of £500 was awarded. Winner: ZHIYANG SUN.
Prize: Winton Prize for Best Dissertation in MSc Statistics/MSc Statistics (Financial Statistics)/MSc Statistics (Social Statistics). This prize was awarded to the student with the highest mark in their dissertation. One prize of £500 was awarded. Winner: TIAN JIN.
Prize: Winton Prize for Academic Excellence in MSc Data Science. This prize was awarded to the MSc Data Science student with the highest overall marks in their assessments. One prize of £500 was awarded. Winner: HAOMIN SHEN.
Prize: Winton Prize for Best Capstone Project in MSc Data Science. This prize was awarded to the group of MSc Data Science students with the highest overall mark in their Capstone Project. One prize of £500 was awarded (divided equally between the group members). Winners: SHAMEEK PHUKAN, ALEXANDER SAFI and SAKSHI MEHTA.
Prize: Winton Prizes for Academic Excellence in Statistics with Financial Applications. This prize was awarded to two undergraduate Statistics students who have taken the Stochastics and Actuarial Methods in Finance course (ST330) and achieved the highest weighted average marks. Prize: Two prizes of £500 were awarded. Winners: JOSHUA EGWUEKWE and CHARLENE CHA.
We are delighted to say that Zetai Cen has been recommended for the award of a PhD for his thesis, High-dimensional time series analysis: imputation and testing Kronecker product structure on tensor factor models, main effect factor models, and spatial autoregressive models.
On behalf of us all in the Department of Statistics, we want to congratulate Dr. Cen on his fantastic achievement and wish him all the best as a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Mathematics at the University of Bristol!
We are very proud to annouce that Sixing Hao has been recommended for the award of a PhD for his thesis,
Latent structure estimation for high-dimensional dependent data via eigenanalysis.
Everyone in the Department of Statistics congratulates Dr. Hao on his fantastic achievement and wish him all the best for the next stage of his career!
We are very proud to announce that the Department of Statistics had seven class teachers who won awards at the LSE Class Teacher Awards.
Everyone in the Department of Statistics is so grateful to our amazing students for taking time to nominate our hard working and supportive teachers.
Congratulations go out to the following teachers who won class teacher awards:
✨ Zachary Allinson
✨ Rowland Bennett
✨ Camilo Cardenas-Hurtado
✨ Shakeel Gavioli-Akilagun
✨ Mingwei Lin
✨ Zetai Cen
✨ Kaifang Zhou
Congratulations go out to the following teachers who were Highly Commended:
✨ Xinhui Liu
✨ Pouya Roudaki
LSE Class Teacher Awards are given to Graduate Teaching Assistants, Teaching Fellows and Guest Teachers in recognition of their very special contribution to teaching at LSE. They are organised by the LSE Eden Centre, and were presented at a ceremony on Thursday 5 June 2025 at the Saw Swee Hock, alongside the LSESU Teaching Awards.
We also had amazing news that:
✨Dr Erik Baurdoux WON the award for Affirming Academic Mentor
✨Dr Pik Liew was Highly Commended for Personal and Professional Development
✨Pouya Roudaki was Highly Commended for Student Voice
This is incredible recognition of their commitment, care, and hard work and everyone in the Department of Statistics is very proud of you!
We are happy to announce that Sixing Hao has been recommended for the award of a PhD for his thesis, Latent structure estimation for high-dimensional dependent data via eigenanalysis.
On behalf of us all in the Department of Statistics, we would like to congratulate Dr. Hao on his fantastic achievement and wish him all the best for the next stage of his career.
We delighted to announce that Xuzhi Yang has been recommended for the award of a PhD for his thesis, Applications of optimal transport in multivariate statistics.
On behalf of everyone in the Department of Statistics, we would like to congratulate Dr. Yang on his fantastic achievement and wish him all the best for the next stage of his career where he will be joining J.P. Morgan & Chase as an off-cycle intern!
Professor Jun Zhang, Dean of the Fudan School of Economics and Ms Yuwen Zhang, Coordinator in the International Program Office at Fudan University visited LSE and discussed with Professor Barrieu, Professor Moustaki and Professor Yao potential areas of cooperation between the Department of Statistics and Fudan School of Economics. The Department is very excited at the prospect of strengthening our relationship with Fudan University and of welcoming their students.
We are proud to announce that Giulia Livieri has won the LSE Photo Prize 2025 for her photo called 'Bridges connect two sides and bring people together'. This year’s theme was ‘Home at LSE' and participants were asked to reflect on places, people and more that feel like home, as well as how they've brought their own home to LSE and/or London.
The LSE Photo Prize is a competition open to all LSE students, staff, and alumni. It is designed with the aim of sharing thoughtful, beautiful, and surprising LSE moments and celebrating creative talent across our community.
On Thursday 15 May in the Great Hall at the Marshall Building there is a celebration of the winners of the 2025 LSE Photo Prize.
Huge congratulations Giulia!
We are delighted to announce that Chengchun Shiis the recipient of the 2025 Peter Gavin Hall IMS Early Career Prize! This is for 'ground-breaking contributions to the development of a wide range of statistical methods and advanced tools in reinforcement learning and their applications to health care and technological industries, bridging gaps between statistics and machine learning, and combining exciting theory with practical usefulness.'
Chengchun commented that, 'As Peter has made huge contributions to the field of statistics, and this prize is created by his friends and family, I am deeply honoured to have received it'.
Find more details about the prize, plus you can view the announcement on the IMS website.
Chengchun will be presented with his honorarium and a plaque at the IMS Awards Ceremony and Presidential Address during the JSM in Nashville.
This is a fabulous achievement, and we are very proud of Chengchun!
Our Head of Department Professor Pauline Barrieuwill become Vice Chair of the Appointments Committee in September 2025 after ending her three-year tenure as Vice Chair of Academic Board in August. She will also step down as Head of the Department of Statistics at this time, to take up the VCAC role.
Pauline says, 'I am very excited to have been appointed as the new VCAC (Vice Chair of the Appointments Committee), starting on 1 September. In this role, I will be working closely with all departments, including our department, helping and supporting with recruitment and promotion, ensuring the integrity and fairness of the processes.
Whilst this is a very exciting new chapter for me, it also means that I will sadly have to step down as Head of Department at the end of August. It has been such a pleasure to work with all colleagues in Statistics during the last three years in shaping the new phase for the Department'.
We will of course miss her as the Head of Department, but wish her every success in her new role! You can read more about her new appointment here.
This year, we partnered with Optiver to run our first-ever Excel-based challenge (previously a Python competition). As a pilot, we limited participation to 50 students (with 39 completing the challenge), requiring them to attend DSL Excel workshops beforehand. Students explored market trading, probabilistic thinking, and decision-making in financial markets through two Optiver-led lectures. They then worked in randomised teams to analyse a mispriced market on PolyMarket, applying data-driven methods in Excel to justify their findings and recommend a bet size. Their work culminated in a judged presentation, where they tackled some tough questions with impressive confidence!
We had some winners from the Department of Statistics as follows:
Best Presentation
Magnus Yeung
Oncel Aldanmaz
Runners-up for best idea
Dennis Malaj
Yong Xin Chai
Huge congratulations to our students!
The Optiver Excel Challenge Awards Ceremony took place on 7 March 2025 in the Shaw Library, Old Building where Professor Emma McCoy delivered a brief address to the students.
We are very excited and proud to announce that Dr. Giulia Livieri has successfully passed major review with promotion to Associate Professor and Dr. Marcos Barreto has successfully passed promotion to Associate Professor (Education). Huge congratulations Giulia and Marcos!
We are delighted to inform you that
(supervisor: Umut Cetin) has been recommended for the award of a PhD for his thesis,
Directional high frequency trading in the Kyle-Back model.
On behalf of everyone in the Department of Statistics, we would like to congratulate Dr. Ferioli Gomes on his fantastic achievement and wish him all the best as he returns to Federal Fluminense University in Brazil.
Yutong Wang has solved the IMS puzzle number 54! Yutong has told the Department of Statistics that, 'I first learned about this puzzle series from Xuzhi Yang and Prof. Tengyao Wang. Xuzhi and I spent an entire night exploring the puzzles from the first ten issues, and we found them both fascinating and highly relevant to quantitative finance interviews.
When I saw that the submission deadline for the latest issue’s puzzle was 2 February, I decided to give it a try. I submitted my solution on 1 February and received a response from Tati, the editor of IMS Bulletin, on 6 February, confirming the correctness of my answer.
I believe that solving these puzzles helps deepen our understanding of statistics and probability theory. They require a strong theoretical foundation as well as some mathematical ingenuity, which I really enjoy.
Thank you (to Xuzhi and Tengyao) for introducing me to these puzzles. I thoroughly enjoyed solving them and will continue to engage with them in the future.'
You can find Yutong's answers on page 10 of this PDFfrom the IMS.
Huge congratulations again, Yutong!
We are very pleased to announce that Joshua Loftus has successfully passed his Interim Review! Huge congratulations, Joshua!
We are pleased to announce that we have been kindly donated the following prizes by Winton. Our Head of Department Professor Pauline Barrieu would like to thank Winton for these donations and the Department of Statistics is extremely thankful for their continued support. A huge congratulations to the students who have worked hard and have been awarded the prizes below.
Prize: Winton Prize for Academic Excellence in MSc Statistics/MSc Statistics (Financial Statistics) and MSc Statistics (Social Statistics). This prize was awarded to the student with the highest overall mark in their assessments. One prize of £500 was awarded. Winner: HAO WEE.
Prize: Winton Prize for Best Dissertation in MSc Statistics/MSc Statistics (Financial Statistics)/MSc Statistics (Social Statistics). This prize was awarded to the student with the highest mark in their dissertation. One prize of £500 was awarded. Winner: WANQING AN.
Prize: Winton Prize for Academic Excellence in MSc Data Science. This prize was awarded to the MSc Data Science student with the highest overall marks in their assessments. One prize of £500 was awarded. Winner: VIVIAN DIRKS.
Prize: Winton Prize for Best Capstone Project in MSc Data Science. This prize was awarded to the group of MSc Data Science students with the highest overall mark in their Capstone Project. One prize of £500 was awarded (divided equally between the group members). Winners: DIVISHA MAKKAR, RHEA MALL, STUTI SUBRAMANI and AYUSH TOPPO.
Prize: Winton Prizes for Academic Excellence in Statistics with Financial Applications. This prize was awarded to two undergraduate Statistics students who have taken the Stochastics and Actuarial Methods in Finance course (ST330) and achieved the highest weighted average marks. Two prizes of £500 were awarded. Winners: SHEUNG YEN LUI and JUN KAI EU.
We are very proud to announce that one of our MSc students Qurat-ul-ain Gul won the LSE Generate Startup competition! Qurat-ul-ain Gul has a AI-based startup called Tabeeer Pvt.LTD.
Qurat-ul-ain Gul told the Department of Statistics that: 'This achievement wouldn’t have been possible without the guidance and unwavering support I received from Dr Ieva Kazlauskaitė, Shakeel Gavioli-Akilagun and most importantly, our Academic Mentor Professor Zoltan Szabo. This milestone demonstrates how the AI and Data Science knowledge imparted here goes beyond theoretical concepts and is actively applied to solve real-world problems.
At Tabeeer, we address the information and support gaps in international education, empowering youth with the tools they need to excel in their academic and professional journeys.
Lastly, I’d like to express my gratitude to the Department for nurturing my skills and confidence. Winning such a competitive award, with over 80 startups from around the globe, is a testament to the incredible education and mentorship I’ve received.'