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.