This year, we were honoured by the generosity of Anona Thorne and Takao Tanabe, who established the Anona Thorne and Takao Tanabe Graduate Entrance Scholarship. Anona Thorne (BA '91 Mathematics; MSc '93 Statistics) is a double alumna of UBC and went on to an interesting career using her statistics training at the CIHR Canadian HIV Trials Network at Saint Paul's Hospital in Vancouver. Takao Tanabe is an internationally acclaimed Canadian painter.
The recipients for 2016 are Sonja Surjanovic and Archer Zhang, both of whom entered the PhD program this fall. Sonja completed her MSc at SFU, with research interests that align closely with interests of members of our department. Her breadth of experience is impressive, from considering the flipped classroom experience to researching designs for studying glaciers. Archer joins us directly into the PhD program after completing his BSc Honours at the University of Toronto. Archer has interests in asymptotics and likelihood theory.