2026 FN David Symposium

The Department of Statistics held the 2026 Florence Nightingale David Symposium, a day of student research presentations, poster sessions, and an alumni panel celebrating the department community and the legacy of Florence Nightingale David, the first female chair and founder of the department. The symposium brought together undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, staff, and alumni for a lively day of research exchange, professional reflection, and community building.

Graduate Student Oral Presentations
The morning featured a graduate student oral presentation session chaired by Dr. Xiaoqian Liu. Three students shared their current research, highlighting the breadth of statistical methodology and applications represented in the department:

The presentations sparked thoughtful discussion among students and faculty and showcased work ranging from large language model evaluation to spatial modeling and causal inference.

Poster Presentations
The symposium also included two poster sessions featuring 10 student posters. Presenters shared their work with faculty, staff, alumni, and fellow students, creating an engaging space for questions, feedback, and conversations across different areas of statistics and data science.

Alumni Panel
The afternoon alumni panel was moderated by Dr. Jeffrey Zhang and featured Dr. Jericho Lawson (Ph.D. class of 2025), Ruihan Lu (Ph.D. class of 2023), Trey McGonigle (M.S. class of 2022), and Jacob Swoveland (B.S. class of 2019). The panelists discussed their backgrounds, their experiences as undergraduate and graduate students, their career paths after UCR, and how they use statistics, data science, and AI in their current work. Students actively engaged with the panelists through questions about graduate school, career transitions, industry and academic paths, and emerging tools such as AI.

Awards
The symposium concluded with the presentation of the Florence Nightingale David Symposium awards. Congratulations to this year’s award winners:

The symposium was co-organized by Drs. Analisa Flores and Esra Kurum together with the STAT DEI Committee: Undergraduate Student Representative Ali Ordentlich; Graduate Student Representatives Makena Grisby, Ace Isabel Mejia-Sanchez, Walter Greyson Navarro; and staff Representatives Patricia Alvarado and Cathy Munoz. The event was also supported by student assistants Grace Mckimson and Jadah Collado.

Read More about the 2026 FN David Symposium

View the full symposium program

View more photos from the event