The P-12 Math and Science Outreach Unit of the Partnership Institute for Mathematics and Science Education Reform  (PIMSER) was recently awarded $780,000 in state grant funds. The Math and Science Partnership Award from the Kentucky Department of Education will aid in the development of a Science Leadership Support Network (SLSN) in central and eastern Kentucky.



In order to facilitate the growth of the STEM disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, PIMSER plays a vital role in public outreach programs at UK. These programs enhance learning in the STEM disciplines by working with Kentucky students as well as providing support, training, and resources for K-16 teachers.

University of Kentucky alum James Booth has found a perfect combination in statistics and genetics.

A Blackpool, England native, Booth studied at the University of Leeds before coming to the United States to study in the Bluegrass. He earned his undergraduate degree in mathematics and his master’s degree in statistics at Leeds before looking at Ph.D. programs.

“I decided to go to the United States for my graduate program and I really only looked at three universities,” Booth said. Those three were Florida State University, Cornell University and UK.

UK professor Joe Gani was well-known among math and statistics faculty at Leeds and Booth ultimately headed to Kentucky in January 1982.

Booth landed in New York before heading south. “It was the first time I came to America and

PhD Student

by Rebekah Tilley

photos by Mark Cornelison

Any person involved in academic research knows there is no way to avoid the field of statistics. Somewhere along the way you have to have a working knowledge of it. Statistics touches everything.

It was this very aspect of the field that captivated Angela Schörgendorfer, now a fourth year doctoral student in the UK Department of Statistics. “I’m a math person. I like doing math that I know will be applied to something. That was what intrigued me about statistics. You can use it for medical research, any kind of social science, and just about anything.” 

Schörgendorfer experienced the wide-ranging application of the field as a statistical consultant to the UK College of Agriculture where she worked on over 100 projects during a two-year period. The

Chunxu Liu was selected as a winner of the ASA Nonparametrics Student Paper Awards Competition at the Joint Statistical Meetings 2009. This competition was organized by the Nonparametrics Section of the American Statistical Association. The award winners were chosen based on a combination of quality of the submitted paper, and quality of the presentation. Chunxu's winning paper is entitled "A Nonparametric Version of Wilks' Lambda: Asymptotics, Approximations, and Permutations". She is currently finishing up her PhD under the supervision of Dr. Arne Bathke.

Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology David Weisrock, along with collaboration from Biology post-doctoral scholar Eric O'Neill and Assistant Professor Ruriko Yoshida from the Department of Statistics have received funding from the National Science Foundation for Weisrock's grant proposal"Genome-level resolution of species boundaries and phylogeny of the North American tiger salamander radiation."

Dr. Ruriko Yoshida has received funding $1.4M in funding over five years from the National Institutes of Health Research Project Grant Program (R01), the Joint DMS/BIO/NIGMS Math/Bio Program for her research, i.e., to apply algebraic geometry and combinatorics to computational problems in phylogenetics, which is the combination of two major fields in life sciences: Genomics, i.e. the study of the function and structure of genes and genomes; and Molecular Phylogenetics, i.e., the study of the hierarchical evolutionary relationships among organisms or genes.

Dr. Bill Rayens of the Statistics department was selected as a Chellgren Endowed Professor.Chellgren Professors are UK faculty members who are outstanding teachers and researchers, each with a compelling interest in undergraduate innovation and excellence. To be named a Chellgren Endowed Professor, a faculty member must propose a specific innovative project aligned with the mission of the Chellgren Center that will be the focus of the professor's scholarly agenda during his or her tenure as a Chellgren Professor.