Student President Candidate Platforms

As the end of the academic year draws near, it is time to find the next Department of Statistics graduate student co-Presidents. This year we have two exceptional sets of candidates. In the order in which we received their platforms, they are: Andrew Olsen & Ran (Wendy) Wei, and Jojo Wang & Marie Ozanne. Below you will find their campaign platforms. Voting will take place from Wednesday, April 9th – Friday, April 11th. You will receive an email on Wednesday with voting instructions.

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Andrew Olsen & Ran (Wendy) Wei

It’s understood by many people that there’s no good solution for the following dilemma:

Grad School Resolutions

But with Andrew Olsen and Ran Wei running for graduate student co-presidents of the statistics department, you could definitely combine lots of fun with graduate study.

Here are what we are going to offer:

  • Student information sessions to help you find your dream job
  • Fun social events
  • A “data hackathon” event providing real world data analysis experience

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Student Information Sessions: Workshops on Job Seeking Skills

  • Industry Jobs
    • Resume Workshop
    • Interview Skills Workshop
    • Students Sharing their Past Internship Experiences
    • Using the OSU Network to Find a Job
  • Academic Jobs
    • How to Land your Dream Academic Position — Advice from Faculty Members
    • The Road to my Academic Job — Perspectives from Upcoming Graduates

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Social Events:

  • Monthly Activities:
    • Sporting Events
    • Taste of Columbus Restaurants
    • Student Culture Showcase
    • Department Traditions
      • Pi-Day Celebration
      • Ice Cream Social
      • Chili Cookoff
      • Spring Picnic
      • Columbus Zoo
  • Happy Hours

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Data Hackathon:

Would you like to join the community of Big Data? Have you heard of the Kaggle competitions (www.kaggle.com/competitions) before? Now we will have our own in the department! Don’t miss it if you are (or would like to be) a data geek, or simply want to take the big fat check home! Our graduate students have won the Capital One National Modeling Competition (https://www.stat.osu.edu/node/1469) ! What other competitions are out there for us to smash?

—— Data Hackathon Month, Statistics@OSU

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Of course we’ll continue:

  •  updating the student blog
  •  organizing the department t-shirt design competition
  •  all the other great things previous presidents have done

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Andrew

Andrew Olsen

I am fourth year Ph.D. student working with Radu Herbei. My research revolves around Markov Chains and their convergence. I have lectured Stat 1450 for two years. Outside academia, I have interned with Abbott Laboratories and JPMorgan Chase, and will be an intern this upcoming summer for Capital One. I am married and have two cute little kids, and I love spending free time with them.

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Ran Wei 057

Ran Wei (also known as Wendy)

I’m a fourth year Ph.D. student and am doing research on data mining, social network analysis and network sampling. I’ve been working as a research assistant, teaching assistant and statistical consultant in the department for my past graduate experience. I’ve done a summer intern at a local IT company called Manta and am going to spend my summer at Twitter as a data scientist intern this year.

Outside academic life, I enjoy all kinds of music, sports and fun stuff. You can find more about me from an earlier post on the department student blog: https://u.osu.edu/cmool/2014/01/26/is-it-spring-yet/

 

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Jojo Wang & Marie Ozanne

Dear students,

Over the past year, we have been inspired by the dedication and creativity former co-presidents Mark Risser and Staci White have brought to the position. We plan to continue important traditions and events started by them, while introducing a couple new ideas of our own. Specifically we plan to:

  1. Maintain the online “student blog”, to chronicle student research and activities for current and prospective students
  2. Continue the annual department t-shirt tradition
  3. Continue holding student seminars to:
    1. Allow senior students to share research interests and advisor information with students who have yet to choose a research area/advisor
    2. Have recent graduates discuss their current careers in both industry and academia
    3. Eat pizza
    4. Organize social events, including:
      1. Ice cream social at the beginning of the school year to welcome incoming students
      2. Happy Hour on Fridays throughout the school year
      3. Department potluck so that we can appreciate the cultural diversity of our department through our culinary creations
      4. Offer course and qualifier advice to younger students

As students from different class years and cultural backgrounds, we hope to use our collective experiences to serve the entire student body, staff, and faculty in the upcoming year. Thank you for your consideration,

Jojo and Marie