I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo. I am interested in developing and applying statistical methods and statistical learning algorithms to advance knowledge in fields including medicine, public health, and insurance. I welcome enquiries from strong students interested in graduate studies or post-doctoral fellowships.
+ 1 (519) 888 4567 x 46130
liqun.diao@uwaterloo.ca
Room 4112 M3-200 University Avenue West Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada
I obtained my Ph.D. degree in Statistics - Biostatistics from the University of Waterloo in 2013. My doctoral dissertation studies diverse problems in event history analysis, but all with a general theme involving complex dependencies modelled by copula functions, which brought me the 2013 Pierre Robillard Award of the Statistical Society of Canada for the best doctoral thesis in probability or statistics defended at a Canadian university in 2013. I worked as a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology at the University of Rochester in the United States in 2014. My postdoctoral experiences at Rochester got me to start research on the development of novel statistical methods for building, selecting and evaluating relevant risk indices using recursive partitioning and other machine learning methods for survival data. I started to work as a research assistant professor in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo since 2015 and started a tenure-track position in 2022. I expanded my research to a broad spectrum of areas including recursive partitioning learning, causal inference, dependence modeling, Bayesian methods, and two-phase design.
B.Econ. (Statistics). Renmin University of China Beijing, China
M.Math. (Statistics - Biostatistics) The University of Waterloo Waterloo, Canada
Ph.D. (Statistics - Biostatistics) The University of Waterloo Waterloo, Canada
October 2019 -Present
Affiliate Researcher
Health Data Science Lab The University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada
April 2019 - Present
Affiliate Researcher
Waterloo Artificial Intelligence Institute The University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada
May 2022 - Present
Assistant Professor (Tenure-Track)
Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science The University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada
July 2015 - April 2022
Research Assistant Professor
Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science The University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada - Maternity Leaves from 08/2018 to 05/2019 and from 08/2020 to 07/2021
October 2014 - June 2015
Post-doctoral Fellow
Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science The University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada
October 2013 - September 2014
Post-doctoral Associate
Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology The University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, United States
2013 Pierre Robillard Award, the Statistical Society of Canada
2024
2024 Outstanding Performance Award
The University of Waterloo Effective May 1, 2005, in accordance with the 2003 Faculty Salary Settlement, the University of Waterloo established an Outstanding Performance Fund to reward faculty members for outstanding contribution in teaching and scholarship. Five out of about sixty faculty members in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science were selected for this award in 2024 and I was the only pre-tenured recipient.
2024
2024 Statistics and Actuarial Science Teaching Award
The University of Waterloo This award recognizes sustained commitment to and excellence in teaching among regular faculty members in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo. The award comes with a cash prize of $500. Two recipients among about sixty faculty members were selected for this award in 2024.
2012 - 2013
UW Senate Scholarship
The University of Waterloo
2009 - 2013
University of Waterloo Graduate Scholarship
The University of Waterloo
2009 - 2013
International Doctoral Student Award
The University of Waterloo
2009 - 2012
Statistics and Actuarial Science Chair’s Award
The University of Waterloo
2008 - 2012
Math Graduate Experience Award
The University of Waterloo
2008 - 2009
International Master’s Student Award
The University of Waterloo