Statistical and data science research and training in the Ontario region has a new home with the launch of the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute (CANSSI) Ontario Regional Centre. The centre will be a multidisciplinary unit in the Faculty of Arts & Science and will promote and support CANSSI’s mission to be a catalyst for discovery and innovation in the statistical and data sciences in Canada.
The director of CANSSI Ontario is Lisa Strug, an associate professor in the Department of Statistical Sciences in the Faculty of Arts & Science and in the biostatistics division at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.
“It is an honour to serve as the inaugural director of CANSSI Ontario,” says Strug. “I intend to facilitate multidisciplinary data-intensive research and training in the province towards impactful discovery.”
Strug is also senior scientist in the Genetics & Genome Biology program at the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and associate director of the Centre for Applied Genomics (TCAG) at the SickKids Research Institute.
Jay Pratt, vice-dean of research & infrastructure in A&S, says the Faculty is “very excited to be the academic host for CANSII Ontario. As one of our newest extra-departmental units, it will foster cross-collaborative research throughout our Faculty, among the various divisions of the University of Toronto and across universities in Ontario.”
According to CANSSI scientific director, Simon Fraser University’s Donald Estep, “The challenges and opportunities facing the statistics and data science communities vary enormously across Canada.
“Regional centres like CANSSI Ontario will provide a way for CANSSI to understand the local environment and deploy its national resources more effectively in each province. We are very fortunate to be able to recruit a person with the achievements and vision of Lisa to lead CANSSI Ontario in order to pursue this goal.”
CANSSI is a national not-for-profit organization with the mission of advancing research, collaboration and training in the statistical sciences by forging collaborations with scientists and scholars in academia, government and industry. CANSSI’s unique model of connecting statistical and scientific leaders for research partnerships emphasizes the co-creation of knowledge, which accelerates innovation in government, industry and society. Another key objective is the training of new researchers to tackle the challenges of the future. CANSSI is supported by major funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.
CANSSI Ontario will support several initiatives that facilitate collaborative research in data science such as data access grants, new investigator awards and training programs. One such CANSSI Ontario-supported program, Strategic Training for Advanced Genetic Epidemiology (STAGE), is a long-standing, successful, multidisciplinary research and training program in statistical genetics and genetic epidemiology. CANSSI Ontario STAGE will be a collaboration between the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Department of Statistical Sciences with representation and participation from several other Ontario university investigators.
With files from the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute.