Department of Statistics, University of Auckland

05/05/2026

🥳Congratulations to all our Statistics Graduands🥳 We wish you all the best in your future careers!

09/03/2026

Congratulations to Priya Parmar and Emma Lehrke recipients of the 2025 Department of Statistics' Teaching Awards at University of Auckland - Waipapa Taumata Rau!

Emma received the Sustained Excellence in Teaching award for her exceptional leadership of STATS 10x, guiding a comprehensive lecture redesign into interactive, activity-based learning experiences. Through championing innovative assessment design with coordinated classroom activities, Emma has enriched the student learning experience across the university’s largest course.

Priya received the Innovation in Teaching award for her course redesign, embedding authentic longitudinal research through a partnership with the Growing Up in New Zealand cohort study, and her innovative approach to equip students with skills for the workplace.

Awards presented by Ben Stevenson (centre) and photo credit to Yannan Jiang.

16/12/2025

🎉 Congratulations 🎉 to all the prize winners from this year’s New Zealand Statistical Association Conference.

We’re especially proud of our own University of Auckland - Waipapa Taumata Rau student winners

Student Prize:
Tarin Eccleston alongside Sarah Croft (University of Otago)

Highly Commended:
Alec van Helsdingen, Ruiting Mao & Siwei Zhai

A huge thanks to Harmonic Analytics for sponsoring the student awards

And a special shout‑out as well to our own Thomas Yee, recipient of the NZSA Littlejohn Research Award!

19/09/2025

📢 Early-Career Travel Grant for the New Zealand Statistical Association Conference 2025 📢

The New Zealand Statistical Association (NZSA) is offering needs-based financial support to help early-career researchers attend our 2025 conference at the University of Otago, Monday 8 to Wednesday 10 December.

To be eligible for funding, applicants must:

⚫ Be an early-career researcher
⚫ Be either seeking employment or in an employment situation where the cost of attendance is not covered by your employer
⚫ Provide a statement outlining why financial support is required, along with any other relevant information (Note: This fund is managed by the Awards committee, and grants are awarded at the committee’s discretion)
⚫Be a member of the NZSA (to join, visit: https://www.stats.org.nz/application-join-nzsa-notify-change-address/)

To apply for an early-career travel grant, please contact Vanessa Cave: [email protected].

Applications will close on Monday, 3rd November.

https://www.otago.ac.nz/maths-and-stats/news/2025-nzsa-conference

The University of Otago Department of Mathematics and Statistics is pleased to host the New Zealand Statistical Association (NZSA) 2025 conference, to be held in person in Dunedin, from 8–10 December 2025.

03/09/2025

The first Ihaka lecture of 2025 is tonight!

Vis-ease - Using visualisation to move beyond the conventional, Professor Dan Exeter School of Population Health,

Come along in-person: lecture atarts at 6.30pm, MLT2/303-102, Building 303, 38 Princes Street (Refreshments will be available before each lecture, at 6pm).

Watch online: https://youtube.com/live/Hu72Z2Vhb8I?feature=share

03/09/2025

The first Ihaka lecture of 2025 is tonight!

Vis-ease - Using visualisation to move beyond the conventional,
Professor Dan Exeter School of Population Health, University of Auckland - Waipapa Taumata Rau

Come along in-person: lecture atarts at 6.30pm, MLT2/303-102, Building 303, 38 Princes Street (Refreshments will be available before each lecture, at 6pm).

Watch online:

"I often receive requests to 'just create a heat map of these data'. What I’m really being asked is to produce a choropleth map of some results. Sometimes th...

29/08/2025

🎉 It’s Mānawa Mai | Open Day 🎉

Come along and chat statistics (& lollies!) 📈🖥️

29/08/2025

🎉 It’s Mānawa Mai | Open Day 🎉

Come along and chat statistics (& lollies!) 📈🖥️ University of Auckland - Waipapa Taumata Rau

28/07/2025

Inaugural Lecture of Professor Barry Milne

Explorations in data: Developing a social research career through serendipity and curiosity.

Date: Wednesday 6th August
Time: 6:00 – 8:00pm
Venue: Building 201, Room 440, 10 Symonds Street, Auckland University of Auckland - Waipapa Taumata Rau

Register: https://www.eventbrite.co.nz/e/inaugural-lecture-of-professor-barry-milne-tickets-1357867972659?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=cp&aff=ebdsshcopyurl

15/07/2025

The annual stats PhD talks day is guaranteed to broaden your statistics horizons.

Fabulous talks from all of our students from gravitational waves via interactive graphics to statistical literacy!🪐 📊👩‍🏫

Congratulations to all presenters, especially to Ruiting (Mica) Mao who scooped the best presenter award and Jiajin Xie who came runner-up.

Interested in a statistics University of Auckland - Waipapa Taumata Rau —> check out https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/study/study-options/find-a-study-option/statistics/doctoral.html

—
**Programme of talks**

“Trends in the Use of Statistical Methods in Medical Research: A Topic Modelling Comparison of the Statistical Methods in Medical Research Journal and the Papua New Guinea (PNG) Medical Journal” Speaker: Deborah Kakis

“The Time Dilation of High Redshift Quasars: Insights from Bayesian Inference” Speaker: Cher Li

“Methods for the Evaluation of Dissimilarity between Two Time Series“ Speaker: Miaotian (Vivian) Li

“HiGraFore: A Graph Neural Network-based Framework for Hierarchical Time-Series Forecasting“ Speaker: Guoping Hu

“Semiparametric Bayesian Spectral Density Estimation“ Speaker: Nazeela Aimen

“Interactive Data Exploration with Plotscaper“ Speaker: Adam Bartonicek

“Variational Inference for Correlated Gravitational Wave Detector
Network Noise“ Speaker: Jianan Liu

“Density Estimation for Compositional Data Using Nonparametric
Mixtures“ Speaker: Jiajin Xie

“Gaps Stitches: A Novel Stacked Hybrid Autoencoder for Imputing LISA Data Gaps“ Speaker: Ruiting Mao

“Novel Indicators for Monitoring Bearing Condition Using Frequency-Domain Dictionary Learning“ Speaker: Hannah Yun

“Generative Adversarial Networks in Two-Phase Validation Studies” Speaker: Keiran Shao

14/05/2025

🥳 Congratulations to all our Statistics Graduands who will soon walk the stage 🥳 We wish you all the best in your future careers!