Keynote Speakers
Charmaine Dean
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Several key collaboration portfolios are managed by her office, including the university-level Centres and Institutes and several major industrial partnerships spanning various units in the university. She has drawn a focus to ethics and social impact related to technology developments through various initiatives and is a key driver for equity and diversity in the context of research and internationalization. Prior to joining the University of Waterloo, Dr. Dean served as the Dean of Science at Western University from 2011 to 2017. She also played a major role in establishing the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University, as the Associate Dean of that Faculty, and was the founding Chair of the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at Simon Fraser University. Dr. Dean has been awarded numerous honours for her work including Fellowships with the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, the Fields Institute, the American Statistical Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2023, she was awarded the Statistical Society of Canada Gold Medal. In 2024, she was bestowed the rank of Chevalier in the prestigious Ordre des Palmes académiques by the French government for her work advancing research connections between Canada and France. Additionally, Dr. Dean has held several editorships and served in numerous leadership roles internationally and nationally, related to equity and inclusion, statistics and data science, research, and computing infrastructure. In Canada, she served as President of the Statistical Society of Canada and serves on several Boards of Directors. She is currently Chair of Council for NSERC (the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada).
Cheng Soon Ong
Cheng Soon Ong is an Associate Science Director at Data61, CSIRO and a senior principal research scientist at the Statistical Machine Learning Group. He works on extending machine learning methods and enabling new approaches to scientific discovery, and has led the machine learning and artificial intelligence future science platform at CSIRO. He supervises and mentors many junior scientists, collaborates with scientists on problems in genomics and astronomy, advocates for open science, and is an adjunct Associate Professor at the Australian National University. He is co-author of the textbook Mathematics for Machine Learning, and his career has spanned multiple roles in Malaysia, Germany, Switzerland, and Australia.
Heather is an Associate Professor and EPSRC Research Software Engineering Fellow in the Statistics Department at the University of Warwick, UK. She has over 20 years of experience in the development of statistical code and software, gained through positions in academia, industry, and as a freelance consultant. In research, she has developed a portfolio of R packages for statistical modelling and collaborated on applications in sports, social science and agriculture. In her work with industry, she has specialised in applications in pharmaceutical R&D, with companies including Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Roche. Heather is active in community management and engagement among R users and developers. She is on the board of the R Foundation and chairs the R Contribution Working Group (fostering the community of contributors to the R project) and the R Forwards taskforce (widening the participation of under-represented groups in the R community).
Mevin Hooten
Mevin Hooten is a Professor in Statistics and Data Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on developing statistical methodology for ecological and environmental applications that involve spatial and spatio-temporal data. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the ASA section on statistics and the environment. He has authored over 185 papers and 3 textbooks and serves as Associate Editor for Biometrics, Environmetrics, and JABES.