{"id":10450,"date":"2011-06-07T15:18:33","date_gmt":"2011-06-07T20:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=10450"},"modified":"2011-06-07T15:18:33","modified_gmt":"2011-06-07T20:18:33","slug":"lifetime-of-loving-math-leads-to-convocation-medal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2011\/06\/lifetime-of-loving-math-leads-to-convocation-medal\/","title":{"rendered":"Lifetime of loving math leads to Convocation medal"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Val

Val Andrei Fajardo, right, receives an award from Murray Knuttila, Provost and Vice-President Academic, at today's Convocation ceremony.<\/p><\/div>\n

Val Andrei Fajardo has always been fond of math.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo this day, I still remember math class in Grade 2 where I would finish my math assignments early and ask the teacher if I could help mark,\u201d he says. \u201cI guess it is natural since my parents are both Certified General Accountants.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fajardo was presented with the Governor General\u2019s Gold Medal at a Convocation ceremony today, recognition of achieving the highest academic standing at the graduate level.<\/p>\n

\"The

The three Vals: Val Andrew, Val Marklou and Val Andrei Fajardo<\/p><\/div>\n

Fajardo, who earned his MSc in Mathematics and Statistics, is one of 388 graduate students receiving their degrees during this week\u2019s ceremonies. He is currently at the University of Waterloo pursuing a PhD in Statistics.<\/p>\n

His MSc research project was under a branch of statistics called extreme value theory. Extreme events occur in financial markets, disease control, industrial quality control and natural disasters.<\/p>\n

\u201cExamples are earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and forest fires which cause huge damage for humans and the economy,\u201d he explains. \u201cThe research work involved modeling extreme events, based on the real world data, to estimate the losses and predict the risk of future extreme events. The results of this research provide methodologies which help to protect against future damage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fajardo was born in the Philippines. He was three when his family came to Canada in 1990, staying briefly in Scarborough before settling in St. Catharines.<\/p>\n

One of four children, he shares with his twin brother and older brother the first-name prefix of Val. He\u2019s good humoured when asked about this family detail, particularly at Brock where his twin, Val Andrew, recently completed an MSc in Applied Health Sciences.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am Val Andrei, my twin is Val Andrew and my older brother\u2019s name is Val Marklou. However, my sister was not named Valerie, but simply, Jacqueline from the greatest\/famous Jackies of the world,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

One of Fajardo\u2019s proudest accomplishments at Brock was receiving an NSERC Alexander Graham Bell CGS scholarship for his master\u2019s research. He is grateful for the guidance he received at Brock during his undergraduate and graduate research career.<\/p>\n

\u201cDr. Mei Ling Huang was my supervisor, for whom I am indebted to for her tremendous amounts of guidance and support. I also must express my gratitude towards Dr. Wai Kong Yuen, Dr. Xiaojian Xu and Dr. Jan Vrbik for their hard work and dedication,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Huang says Fajardo\u2019s research results are significant and have impressive real-world applications.<\/p>\n

\u201cVal Andrei is a careful and creative thinker with a long list of natural attributes \u2014 work ethic, confidence, respectfulness, calm demeanor, team player, dedication to success, and a positive attitude,\u201d she says. \u201cHis academic achievements are an inspiration to me, my fellow colleagues and many students.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related links:<\/strong>
\n\u2022 Convocation schedule<\/a>
\n\u2022 Link to a live stream of this week’s ceremonies<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Val Andrei Fajardo has received a Governor General\u2019s Gold Medal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10451,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,1],"tags":[156,3330,3328],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10450"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10450"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10454,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10450\/revisions\/10454"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}