I am a statistically trained biomedical data scientist who develops statistically rigorous and computationally scalable machine-learning methods and open-source software to integratively analyze population-scale multi-omics data, working in the intersection of population health and genomics study. What is your favorite part about your current occupation/position? I work in an...

Choosing the MS in Stats program at UIUC was one of the best decisions I made in my early career. I previously had full-time work experience in a global digital marketing company, which introduced me to the analytics world, but it was the graduate school experience at UIUC that developed me into a well-rounded professional. My career switch occurred after the MS program brought me an opportunity...

I came to UIUC after receiving my BS in Mathematics from Bradley University ('16). At the time I wasn't completely sure what I wanted to do, but I have always appreciated data and found that my Statistics courses were consistently my favorites so I decided to work towards my Masters in Statistics. UIUC offered interesting coursework and its collaboration with State Farm provided a unique real-...

My name is Karle Flanagan and I am a Senior Instructor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  I have taught introductory statistics to over 20,000 students at UIUC since Spring of 2014.  I am currently still teaching introductory statistics, as well as working on course development for other advanced statistics courses and...

I started at the University of Illinois as an engineering major and after taking STAT 400 with Professor Stepanov I quickly realized that was the field for me. I was drawn to the practical applications of statistics in a world where data was becoming ever more prevalent. After taking the two SAS classes offered and attending SAS day to listen to State Farm’s talk, I landed an internship with them...

After beginning in the College of Business and participating in a job shadow, I realized Finance and Accounting was not what I was interested in pursuing – I wanted to research and develop financial metrics and models, perform deep dive analysis to identify why certain trends were occurring, and create solutions to address them. I had a great conversation with the statistics undergraduate adviser...

Shree graduated in May 2015 with a Bachelor of Science in Statistics and Economics with minors in Computer Science and Mathematics. Presently, he is working as a Product Lead 2 at Deloitte & Touche LLP out of their Chicago office. He is part of the Product Development team at Deloitte and leads the Support and Operations verticle for several software products, which are used by internal...

Sheila Gudehithlu is an Instructor in the Math and Statistics Department at Loyola University at Chicago. At Loyola, Sheila teaches Introduction to Statistics to students who are in non-math related majors. And Introduction to Biostatistics to Biology related majors. Sheila received her Bachelor's degree in Statistics in May 2012 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She continued at...

Jeffrey Liu is a 2013 PhD recipient from the Department of Statistics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is currently a Data Scientist at Google working on search quality systems and analytics for the tech giant search engine.  What is your favorite part about your current occupation/position? How did you get to where you are now? I work on search quality...

Tia Mark's first job out of college after graduating with her Bachelor's degree in Statistics in 2015 was for a consulting company, Mu Sigma, where she lived in India for six months and was able to travel all over Asia. Currently, Tia is a Business Process Manager at Walgreens headquartered in Deerfield, IL. Her daily responsibilities...

I'm a biostatistician at Sanofi. The best part of my job is working with talented colleagues and applying statistics to clinical trials for drug development. My advisor, Dr. Xuming He, not only guided me in dissertation, but also helped me to gain precious experience by working as a statistical consultant at the department of statistics, a research assistant for data analyses in deglutition and...

Tereza developed an interest in statistics during her undergraduate studies in Cambridge, from where she graduated with a BA in the Mathematical Tripos in 1998, before moving on to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for graduate study. She was awarded her MSc from the University of Illinois in 2000 and her PhD in 2005, with a year’s work experience in actuarial consulting in-between....

Gang Chen is a 2012 PhD graduate currently working as a research orientated software development engineer for A9.com in Silicon Valley. A9 is an Amazon company located in Palo Alto, California that manages search and advertising technologies for Amazon and other clients. If you've done a search on Amazon, you've used A9's search engine.  What is your favorite part about your...

Huitian Jiao is currently a Data Scientist at Microsoft working on intelligent features for Office such as developing clustering/classification algorithms to generate relevant topics for end users in Python and Azure. She received her MS in Statistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2014.  ...

I am a Product Manager for Snap (Snapchat). My team and I focus on the machine learning ad systems to ensure that most relevant ads are shown to each user. My college education began at Illinois in the statistics department pursuing a degree in statistics & computer science. I always enjoyed Statistics in high school and was intrigued by how math could be used to solve real world problems....

Studying statistics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign provided me with the education and resources necessary to help jump-start my career in today's data-driven economy. The department's active relationship with the university's Research Park allowed me the opportunity to apply my learnings outside of the classroom. It was there while interning at State Farm RDC that I decided...

Choosing Statistics graduate program at University of Illinois is one of the best decisions I have ever made. The combination of theoretical and practical courses, has equipped me with not only solid foundation on Statistics, but also hands-on experience solving real world problems. The program has great faculty and advisers who are very knowledgeable. They keep an eye out to help their students...

Chris Lalla received his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science Degree in Statistics from the University of Illinois in 2011 and 2012, respectively.  He is currently a Data Scientist – Project Lead at Zurich North America, which is a Commercial Insurance Company with its’ headquarters the suburbs of Chicago.  Zurich North America offers a variety of insurance coverages, including...

In the months leading up to the completion of my undergraduate degree in statistics from the University of Illinois, I was faced with a decision regarding my future. Having had an exceptional group of professors and an amazing cohort of students to work with and learn from, I realized that the U of I still had so much to offer in regards to higher education. I decided to continue my education at...

I came to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as a math major, but knew that being a researcher or teacher was not for me! I have always had a love for sports especially baseball (Go Cubs!) and as a kid starting keeping score of Cubs games whenever they were on TV. I never thought that fun hobby would lead to a career as a statistician but here I am many years later...

As an international student, I came to Champaign in the summer of 2012 for Master program in Statistics. Currently I am employed with Amazon as a data scientist, formerly with Zillow. Two years of studying experience in the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign definitely prepared me well (and also my classmates I believe) for my early career. If you look at my (and their) career path, there...

I'm Lara Troszak, I graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in Winter 2012. I now work as a statistician at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Healthcare System. My studies in statistics at the University of Illinois led me to obtain a Masters in biostatistics at the University of California, Berkeley, which led me to my current position...

One of the most appealing aspects of statistics for me was the realization that I could apply analytics and statistical learnings to just about any area of interest—finance, insurance, health, or sports, to name a few. Through my statistics courses at Illinois, I gained a solid understanding of core statistical theory as well as the tools needed to apply that theory to real-world business...