News

The Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science proudly celebrates the appointment of Dr. Gord Willmot as Distinguished Professor Emeritus, recognizing his outstanding research, mentorship, and more than four decades of transformative contributions to the University of Waterloo and the global actuarial science community.

The Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science is thrilled to announce Dr. Mary Hardy’s appointment as Distinguished Professor Emerita, celebrating her extraordinary impact over 26 years as a trailblazing scholar, educator, and leader whose work has helped shape the future of actuarial science at Waterloo and beyond.

The Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science proudly celebrates the remarkable first-place victory by a team of its students, Team Factuarial, in the prestigious 2025 Society of Actuaries (SOA) Research Institute Student Research Case Study Challenge. Team Factuarial members include Math/BBA double-degree students Ki Yan Chan and William Zhang and software engineering student Kevin Jiang, along with faculty advisor Dr. Ben Feng from the Statistics and Actuarial Science Department. The annual challenge invites students to apply their actuarial expertise to real-world business problems, conducting analyses, developing models, and presenting recommendations to a panel of judges from the SOA Research Institute. Competing against 278 students in 68 teams from 42 universities across 17 countries and six continents, Team Factuarial secured the top honour and a grant prize in 2025.arial science and emerge as leaders in the field.”

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From May 2–4, the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science hosted the 2025 American Statistical Association (ASA) DataFest: an international data analysis challenge where teams of undergraduates work intensively to “find and share meaning in a large, rich, and complex data set.” This year, 130 students across 30 teams started the competition, with only 17 teams able to complete DataFest’s rigorous 48-hour challenge.

The winning teams were:

• Best Insight: Huatieloo Data Masters

• Best Use of External Data: BBGS

• Best Visualization: Team B

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Read the full announcement on the SSC website.

Congratulations Liyuan Lin, winner of the 2025 Pierre Robillard Award from the Statistical Society of Canada for her PhD thesis, "Measures for risk, dependence and diversification,". Her work, completed at the University of Waterloo, focused on quantitative risk management, introduces a novel diversification index and spans finance, actuarial science, and statistics, demonstrating both theoretical depth and practical impact. Lin is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Business School at Monash University, Australia.

The Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science is pleased to congratulate the University of Waterloo team on their success at the 2025 Munich Re Cup this March. The Munich Re Cup is the premier actuarial science student case competition in North America, with a total of $20,000 of prize money handed out each year.

Out of 20 initial teams, the University of Waterloo team, consisting of actuarial science students Sue Liu, Bernice Xiao, Yue Zheng, and faculty advisor Emily Kozlowski, was selected as one of the six finalist teams that competed at the two-day in-person final round of the case competition in Toronto.

At the in-person competition the Waterloo team competed against five other teams coming from top-tier actuarial programs across North America on this year’s case topics of Longevity Risk and a comprehensive strategy to break into the Pension Risk Transfer (PRT) market. The University of Waterloo team delivered an impressive performance, winning third place and $4000 of prize money. Congratulations on this well-earned achievement!

Read the full version on the Faculty of Math website.

Austin Riis-Due’s actuarial journey began in high school on a whim, studying for his first exam with a friend. By the time he graduated from The University of Texas at Austin, he had passed seven Society of Actuaries (SOA) exams. Now, at just 24, Riis-Due has achieved Fellowship in the SOA—an honor typically earned much later in an actuary’s career—while pursuing a PhD in Actuarial Science & Quantitative Finance at the University of Waterloo.

Austin credits his success to Waterloo’s top-tier program and mentorship from his PhD advisors, Professors David Landriault and Bin Li, as well as Professor Yi Shen. His passion for mathematics and risk modeling has led him to global collaborations, research papers, and conferences across Europe and Africa.

Beyond academics, he cherishes the actuarial community’s tight-knit network, the ability to solve real-world financial challenges, and his deep-rooted love for Texas Longhorns football. With a bright future ahead, Riis-Due continues to push the boundaries of actuarial science while inspiring the next generation of scholars.

The Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science is happy to be recognized by the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) as a Silver Tier member under the CAS University Recognition Program. This program recognizes academic institutions with a demonstrated commitment to preparing property and casualty actuaries through their educational offerings. The CAS is the world’s only actuarial organization focused exclusively on property and casualty risks, serving over 10,000 members worldwide. The university will receive a set of benefits that accompany this honour, including being featured on the official CAS University Recognition Program list on the CAS website.

Biostatistics professor and serial winner Michael Wallace on maximizing your odds in annual Tim Hortons contest.

Michael, an associate professor in Statistics and Actuarial Science, made headlines in 2020 when he figured out how to win the coffee chain’s newly digital Roll Up game 98 per cent of the time. That winning streak was the result of playing all his accumulated rolls in the middle of the night on the last day of the promotion. Though he only won free coffee and donuts, his high win rate got the attention of Tim Hortons. When they changed their algorithm, he kept playing, developing a new strategy in 2023 that resulted in another winning streak, and another round of media coverage.

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