UC Berkeley Department of Statistics

10/06/2026

UC Berkeley researchers have created a new genomic language AI model, called GPN-Star, that far outpaces its competitors at identifying important genetic variants that contribute to inherited traits, including those that lead to disease.

In the new study – led by Yun S. Song, professor of computer science and statistics at UC Berkeley – the team found that models trained at different evolutionary timescales were better at interpreting different kinds of genetic variants. Because the model requires minimal resources to train, the researchers hope that the model will help other teams around the world modify, adapt and improve upon their work, accelerating our understanding of genetics in humans and other species. The research was published Sept. 9 in the journal Nature.

“We hope our work will help drive biological discovery,” said Song, director of the Center for Computational Biology, UC Berkeley, co-director of the UC Berkeley-UCSF Bakar Computational Biomedicine Initiative, and an investigator at the Innovative Genomics Institute. “People have developed really creative tools for assaying the impact of genetic variants, but they cannot experimentally test every single variant in the genome. We believe our predictions will help to prioritize the experiments that could have the greatest impact on human health.”

🔗 Read more: https://bit.ly/4r0jKoi

UC Berkeley Department of Statistics | Berkeley Engineering

09/02/2026

Welcome to Jingfeng and Kevin!

06/17/2026

Yu’s Paradigm-Shifting Veridical Data Science Impacts Research and Health Applications

Over the last decade, Professor Bin Yu and her research group have pioneered and refined a new data science paradigm called Veridical Data Science (VDS), beginning with a 2020 PNAS paper co-authored by Yu and her former PhD. student K. Kumbir. VDS is designed to set up operational guardrails for the entire data science cycle towards "truthful" results by relying on three core principles: Predictivity, Computability, and Stability (PCS).

https://statistics.berkeley.edu/about/news/yus-paradigm-shifting-veridical-data-science-impacts-research-and-health-applications

photo via David Apilado, Jr.

06/16/2026

Professor Emeritus Ching-Shui Cheng passed away on June 7th, 2026. Ching-Shui joined the Berkeley faculty in 1977 and served until his early retirement in 2013. Following his tenure here, he joined the Institute of Statistical Science at Academia Sinica in Taiwan, where he served two terms as Director.

He was widely recognized as a rigorous scholar and a preeminent leader in experimental design. His research has had a profound impact on various fields, including agriculture and numerous scientific and industrial applications. Beyond his research, he served as Editor of Statistica Sinica and was elected an Academician of Academia Sinica. As Director of the Institute of Statistical Science, he provided forward-looking leadership, notably establishing a joint data science program with National Taiwan University and fostering international collaborations.

Ching-Shui was a kind and valued colleague who frequently welcomed international students and friends into his home. He will be deeply missed by our community.

A celebration of Ching-Shui’s life will be held on June 19th in Lafayette, CA. More information and a full obituary: https://www3.stat.sinica.edu.tw/memcheng/index.html

03/12/2026

Big Give 2026 is live! Today, your enthusiasm for UC Berkeley Statistics shines even brighter than usual. We invite you to give to Statistics to help support graduate students, fund faculty, and more.

Members of the Berkeley Statistics Alumni Advisory Board will match, dollar for dollar, every gift made to the Department of Statistics up to $20,000.

March 12

12/18/2025

Associate Professor Fernando Pérez recently participated in a Cal Alumni Association panel titled “Democratizing AI Through Platforms,” with fellow Berkeley Professor and Databricks co-founder Ion Stoica, AI Squared CEO Darren Kimura, and moderated by AI Squared Chief Innovation Officer and Berkeley lecturer Napoleon Paxton.

Pérez is the co-founder of Project Jupyter, a non-profit, open-source project that evolved from the IPython Project in 2014 to support interactive data science and scientific computing across all programming languages. Pérez's research focuses on creating tools for modern computational research and data science across domain disciplines, emphasizing high-level languages, interactive and literate computing, and reproducible research. Pérez also serves as Faculty Director for the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS).

A look inside Berkeley Forward brings together Ion Stoica, Fernando Pérez, Darren Kimura, and Napoleon Paxton to discuss artificial intelligence, open platforms, and community driven innovation.

12/11/2025

Last month, Assistant Professor Amanda Coston was awarded a significant research grant by the Okawa Foundation for Information and Telecommunications. The award ceremony took place at Hotel Nikko in San Francisco.

Photos via the Okawa Foundation.

12/03/2025

In September 2025, at the Berkeley Statistics Annual Research Symposium, legendary Professor Peter Bickel spoke about the department's history as it celebrated its 70th anniversary. Bickel goes from Statistics' founder Jerzy Neyman all the way to the present day, all while contextualizing the Department's wider role in the study of statistics. Bickel also shares his views of the future of data science and its part in society.

In September 2025, at the Berkeley Statistics Annual Research Symposium, legendary Professor Peter Bickel spoke about the department's history as it celebrat...