This year’s recipients of the Dr. John and Barbara Petkau Scholarships are Wanqing Hu and Chenyue Qian.
Wanqing Hu is a third-year Statistics major student, excelling in her academic performance and having received multiple scholarships, including Trek Excellence Scholarship and Faculty of Science International Student Scholarship. In a project from last year, she employed coding and visual representations to help the team identify the optimal predictors that determine raisin species. Moreover, an internship experience in Dongguan Securities not only honed her skills in data cleansing and analysis but also ignited a passion for the financial sector. Looking ahead, Wanqing is enthusiastic about deepening her understanding of Statistics and actively pursuing opportunities aligned with this field of expertise.
Chenyue Qian, a fourth-year Statistics major, has been honoured with his second Petkau scholarship, following his initial award a year ago upon entering his third year. He maintains an exceptional academic record, consistently achieving grades in the remarkable range of 96 to 100 across his coursework in Statistics, Mathematics, and Economics. He has also been recognized with the Mo Lin YU Memorial Prize in the Faculty of Science and James Ross Groundwater and Fergus Ross Groundwater Scholarship in Science. In the summer of 2023, Chenyue contributed as an undergraduate research assistant in Professor Geoffrey Schiebinger's Lab, focusing on topics in Mathematical Biology.
About the Dr. John and Barbara Petkau Scholarships
In 2016, John and Barbara Petkau endowed two scholarships to recognize the academic merit of the next generation of statisticians and the impact these statisticians will have on solving world problems. One scholarship is for a student entering third year, and the other is for a student entering fourth year.
John Petkau, a professor emeritus in the Department, has contributed in many ways to the Department and the discipline with his vision and leadership, statistical expertise, generosity of time, and his mentoring of undergraduate and graduate students. John’s wife, Barbara, deserves special thanks, for generously sharing John's time with us.
See a list of previous recipients of the scholarships here.