UBC Statistics announces the appointment of three new tenured/tenure track faculty – Lucy Gao, Joel Östblom, and Geoff Pleiss.
Lucy began an Assistant Professor position with us on July 1, 2022.
Joel joined us on August 23, 2022 in an Assistant Professor of Teaching position with a primary focus on the Master of Data Science (MDS) program.
And Geoff will begin his role as an Assistant Professor in the area of statistical machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) on July 1, 2023.
Get to know our new colleagues
Lucy Gao
Lucy began an Assistant Professor position with us on July 1, 2022.
Previously, Lucy was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Washington.
Much of her work involves developing statistical methods to answer scientific questions using complex data sets in the biomedical sciences, often by building off of ideas in the area of statistical machine learning. She also investigates issues related to the design of research studies, often by applying insights from the field of mathematical optimization.
Joel Östblom
Joel joined us on August 23, 2022 in an Assistant Professor of Teaching position with a primary focus on the Master of Data Science (MDS) program.
Joel is coming from a position as a Postdoctoral Teaching and Learning Fellow in UBC’s Master of Data Science (MDS) program.
Joel earned his B.Sc. and M.Sc. from Karolinska Institute. He completed his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto, where he developed a passion for data science and reproducibility through the development of quantitative image analysis pipelines for studying stem cell and developmental biology. He cares deeply about spreading data literacy and excitement over programmatic data analysis, which he contributes to via open source projects and data science learning resources.
Geoff Pleiss
Geoff will begin his role as an Assistant Professor in the area of statistical machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) on July 1, 2023.
Until then, he will continuously work as a postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia University, with affiliations in the Department of Statistics and the Zuckerman Institute. He obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University and his B.Sc. from Olin College of Engineering.
His research interests are broadly situated in machine learning, including neural networks, Gaussian processes, uncertainty quantification, and scalability.
Geoff is also the co-founder and maintainer of the GPyTorch software library.
Please extend warm welcomes to Lucy, Joel, and Geoff. UBC is extremely fortunate to be availing itself of their energies and talents!