Congratulations to University of Washington Department of Biostatistics class of 2024! Students graduating this academic year were recognized at a celebration on Sunday, June 9, attended by family, friends, faculty, and staff.
Amy Willis, an associate professor in biostatistics, delivered the commencement address. She thanked students for their sustained energy, enthusiasm, and curiosity, and invited them consider three things:
- To practice being kind to yourself. “Your inner dialogue is something that only you can hear and it’s so important that it lift you up and not push you down."
- To choose your own goals. “Your goals don’t have to be lofty, but they do have to be your own. If you have your own goals, you will always be working for yourself and that is a great freedom."
- To discover what makes you different because what makes you different is your super power. “If you can know what only you think then you can figure out what only you can do, and that is how you make a difference and create the world that you want to live in.”
Student Awards
During the ceremony, awards were presented to senior students who have excelled in scholarship, communication, and leadership. Graduate Program Director Ken Rice honored the following students:
- Yiyi Huo, 2024 Senior MS Thesis Student
- Fernanda Montoya, 2024 Senior MS Capstone Student
Students who received UW School of Public Health with Excellence Awards in May were also recognized. Erika Fox received the Outstanding MS Student in Biostatistics award, and María Alejandra Valdez-Cabrera received the Outstanding PhD Student in Biostatistics award.
Class of 2024
Congratulations to all of our graduates in 2024!
Master of Science Capstone
Students graduating from the MS Capstone program in 2024 were recognized in a ceremony held in May.
Master of Science Thesis
Yile He
- Program: MS Thesis
- Thesis: "A comparative study of principal component analysis and dynamic mode decomposition"
- Advisor: Eardi Lila
Yiyi Huo
- Program: MS Thesis
- Thesis: "A simulation study of the double robust estimator of Benkeser"
- Advisor: Andrea Rotnitzky
Yichen Wang
- Program: MS Thesis
- Thesis: "Analysis of Coronavirus Prevention Network COVID-19 vaccine efficacy trials: Do vaccine side effects predict better efficacy to prevent COVID-19?"
- Advisors: Marco Carone and Peter Gilbert
PhD
María Alejandra Valdez-Cabrera
- Program: PhD
- Dissertation: "Statistical methods for phylogenetic trees with non-identical leaf sets"
- Advisor: Amy Willis
