The year 2020 has been a challenging time for all of humanity due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, many researchers are conducting abundant research to fight against this awful virus. In the first half of 2020, a paper has been published in the international academic journal titled ‘Nature’, stating that by analysing data, researchers have successfully identified 332 kinds of protein-protein interaction involved in the coronavirus infection, and about 1/5 of them were targets of existing drugs or could be used for developing therapies for COVID-19. This paper was completed by an international team of about 100 researchers, of which Zhou Yuan, an alumna who graduated in 2017 from Statistics Programme of UIC, was a member of the research.

Another year and another class of graduating students will say goodbye to their alma mater and start a new journey. The four years spent at UIC is some of the best years of their life. How many stories and sceneries have been treasured along the way? How much hard work has paid off? Following is the sharing of Year 4 Statistics student, Chen Xin.

A total of 57 teams of UIC students won awards at the Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM) and the Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling (ICM) 2020, and the number of Meritorious Winners and Honourable Mentions' winners reached a record high. These students are from the Division of Science and Technology (DST) and the Division of Business and Management (DBM), of which five teams were selected for the Meritorious Winners, while 10 teams received the Honourable Mentions, and 42 teams won the Successful Participants award.

The Division of Science and Technology (DST) welcomed two guest speakers on 5 December. The first speaker was Dr Wang Dan, who is an Assistant Professor of Finance at New York University Shanghai (NYU Shanghai) and also a Global Network Assistant Professor, New York University. Following her was Research Fellow at the School of Data Science at Fudan University, Dr Chen Zhao.

The lecture theatre was packed full of students and faculty members who were all eager to listen to the Division of Science and Technology (DST) distinguished guest Prof Tze Leung Lai on 4 December. Prof Tze Leung Lai is the Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor of Statistics and by courtesy, also of Biomedical Data Science, and Computational and Mathematical Engineering at Stanford University.