SDS Associate Professor Layla Parast Wins 2024 CNS Teaching Excellence Award

Each year, the College of Natural Sciences Teaching Excellence Award recognizes educators who provide exceptional education for their students through memorable experiential learning opportunities, research-based and effective teaching, and mentoring. This year, UT Statistics and Data Sciences Associate Professor Layla Parast was awarded the Teaching Excellence Award as a recognition of her achievements as an educator.

Dr. Parast co-developed the first SDS major course, SDS 313: Introduction to Data Science and a popular course in our Master of Science in Data Science online program called Data Science for Health Discovery and Innovation. She is deeply passionate about teaching and mentoring students at all career stages. 

Dr. Parast received her B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin and went on to receive her M.S. in Statistics at Stanford University, and finally to graduate from Harvard University with her Ph.D. in Biostatistics. Previously, she was a senior statistician at the RAND Corporation and co-director of the Center for Causal Inference. She joined the Statistics and Data Sciences faculty in January 2022.  Dr. Parast is a leading expert in the development of surrogate markers of disease and the analysis of time-to-event data.  Her work on surrogate marker for diabetes has been funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.