The Department of Statistics is pleased to announce that four students have recently received scholarship funded by the Statistics Student Support Fund. This fund was established in 2024 to support students pursuing degrees in the Department of Statistics. Although the fund is open to contributions from various donors, it was established based upon the considerable generosity of Mr. Devdutt Yellurkar. In establishing the fund, Mr. Yellurkar was keen to provide meaningful support to students who are citizens of the United States with financial need. He is a venture capitalist with a long career of involvement with companies in the technology sector, so he also has a particular interest in supporting statistics and data science. The four recipients of this year's scholarships are: Desarai Brown. A member of the founding cohort of the online MS degree program in applied data science (MS-ADS), Ms. Brown is now a 2nd year student pursuing her MS-ADS degree. A native of Kennesaw, Georgia, Desarai received her bachelor's degree from UGA in 2023, majoring in Psychology, with a minor in statistics. Angelina Garcia. Ms. Garcia is a senior from Bethlehem, GA working on her BS in Statistics and MS in Statistics in the UGA Double Dawg program. Ms. Garcia is also a McNair Scholar, and she is currently working with Department of Statistics faculty members Dr. Gauri Datta and Dr. Abhyuday Mandal on a research project in the area of Bayesian ranking methods. Soup Lindsey. Ms. Lindsey is an incoming student in the master's degree program in statistics. She graduated from the Honors College of the University of South Carolina (USC) with a major in statistics and minors in psychology and music. A four-year member of the marching band and choir at USC, she has strong interests in the visual and performing arts as well as statistics and psychology. Sloka Sudhin. Ms. Sudhin is a statistics master's student participating in the UGA Double Dawg program. In May 2026, she completed her undergraduate degree, double majoring in data science and applied mathematics. Among several honors and awards, Ms. Sudhin is a Goldwater Scholar, a Midterm Foundation Fellow, a Stamps Scholar, a winner of the Kossack Prize and Hollingsworth Award from the Department of Mathematics, recipient of the UGA Presidential Award of Excellence, and a winner of both a Fall 2023 research assistantship and a summer research fellowship from the UGA Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities. Type of News/Audience: Departmental
