MSCS 2025

Pengfei Guan is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at McGill University. He earned his Ph.D. (1989) and M.S. (1986) in Mathematics from Princeton University, and his B.S. (1982) in Mathematics from Zhejiang University, China. Before joining McGill in 2004, he held faculty positions at McMaster University, where he advanced from Assistant Professor (1989-1993) to Associate Professor (1993-1997) and Professor (1997-2004).

His research focuses on nonlinear partial differential equations and geometric analysis. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (2008) and a Distinguished James McGill Professor (since 2019). His honors include an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (1993-1995), a Tier I Canada Research Chair (2005-2019), and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal (2012).

Neil Spencer is an assistant professor in the Statistics Department at University of Connecticut, specializing in robust Bayesian inference, network science, and efficient statistical computation. Motivated by collaborations in forensic science, anthropology, and medicine, his research focuses on developing statistical methods for complex data structures, including networks, images, and point patterns. By balancing reliable uncertainty quantification with computational feasibility, he aims to create practical, trustworthy tools that support scientific discovery. He holds a PhD in Statistics and Machine Learning from Carnegie Mellon University, an MSc in Statistics from the University of British Columbia, and a BScH in Mathematics and Statistics from Acadia University. 

Sedgwick Lecture (CS): Rita Orji is a Canada Research Chair in Persuasive Technology and a Professor of Computer Science at Dalhousie University where she directs the Persuasive Computing Lab. Her research at the intersection of technology and human behaviour focuses on designing interactive technologies to empower people, improve lives, and contribute to solving many societal problems. Specifically, technologies that integrate into people’s daily lives and support them to achieve various self-improvement goals. She applies her work to tackle real-life problems in various domains including improving a wide range of health and wellness objectives such as mental health, healthy eating, physical activity, smoking cessation, sexual and other health risk behaviours. She has received over 40 million dollars from competitive grant funding from agencies and governments around the world to support her work. With over 350 peer-reviewed papers, Dr. Orji has won over 100 prestigious awards and recognitions nationally and internationally in recognition of her work in this area. Recently, she received the NSERC Arthur B. McDonald Fellowship - Canada's highest Early Career Research prize in Science/Engineering, the Outstanding Young Computer Science Researcher Award from Computer Science Canada and was named among the Top 150 Canadian Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), Top 60 African Women in STEM, Top 100 Canada’s Most Powerful Women, Top 100 Nigeria’s Leading Women, admitted into the Royal Society of Canada and the Global Young Academy. She was also a recipient of both the Vanier Scholarship and the Banting Fellowship. She is a renowned speaker who has delivered over 30 keynotes and over 100 invited talks and other presentations.