Department of Statistics

Newsletter | Fall 2023

From the Department Head

Murali Haran

I write this letter a day after “falling back,” our annual ritual of setting our clock back by an hour that ushers in longer nights and chillier days. As academics, this is also when we reach an intense portion of the semester close to Thanksgiving break, the semicalm before the end-of-semester storm. Summer seems like a long time ago! As always, the Penn State alumni reception was a summer highlight at the Joint Statistical Meetings held in Toronto in early August this year. It was great to see everyone. In the department, we held the third edition of the Department of Statistics Public Lecture Series, where each semester one of our faculty presents statistical ideas at a level that is appealing and understandable to a broad audience. This fall’s public talk, on functional data, was given by Francesca Chiaromonte. Soon after, we hosted the first ever Keystone State Statistics Symposium, co-organized by Penn State, Temple, and the University of Pittsburgh, where we brought together academic statisticians from across the state of Pennsylvania. We hope this opportunity for statisticians from across the state to mingle will become an annual tradition. Yanyuan Ma, from our department, gave the keynote talk on connections between missing data and causal inference. As always, our faculty, students, and staff have received many accolades this summer and fall from the profession and the University; you can read about some of them below. 

This fall also marked the end of an era. Professor C.R. Rao passed away in August at the age of 102. One of the great minds of twentieth century statistics and science, he was a presence in our department from when he joined our faculty in 1988 until around 2010 when he moved to Buffalo to live with his daughter, Tejaswini Rao. We were privileged to have a luminary like him around the department for close to two decades. It was remarkable to have a colleague who not only had a front row seat to the emergence of modern statistics—Professor Rao was a student of R.A. Fisher, arguably the founder of modern statistics—but also actively contributed to the foundations of our discipline himself. His mere presence in the department attracted distinguished visitors and greatly contributed to our visibility in the field. He was also sociable, and I remember, as a new assistant professor, attending parties that he and his wife, Bhargavi, would host at their home. He had a very long and impactful life and leaves behind an extraordinary legacy of scholarship. 

Before signing off, I’d like to share with you a short video that an alumnus, Wei Zhong (Ph.D. 2012), kindly shared with us. Wei is currently chair of the Department of Statistics at Xiamen University, China, and is visiting Penn State this semester with his wife, alumna Jingyuan Liu (Ph.D. 2013). The video was taken on September 24, 2008. Wei says he was in a course called Communications in Statistics for which, as part of an assignment to learn about a famous statistician, he chose to interview Professor Rao. In this short video, he asks Professor Rao to share his thoughts with future generations of statisticians. The formality of his carefully prepared speech as well as his trademark shrug-and-smile immediately brought back memories of this legendary figure who once inhabited Thomas Building with the rest of us. Watch the video on YouTube.

With best wishes to you and yours for the holiday season and beyond,
—Murali

Remembering C. R. Rao (1920–2023)

Murali Haran
Professor C.R. Rao, Eberly Professor Emeritus of Statistics at Penn State, passed away on August 22 this year at the age of 102. His remarkable career began in the early 1940s at the Indian Statistical Institute and took him to Cambridge for a Ph.D. under the guidance of R.A. Fisher, the founding father of modern statistics. Professor Rao made groundbreaking contributions throughout his career, culminating in the 2023 International Prize in Statistics, sometimes referred to as the Nobel Prize in the field. Many of his results, like the Cramer-Rao Lower Bound and Rao-Blackwellization, are fundamental and taught in introductory courses on mathematical statistics all over the world. His research has impacted fields as diverse as agriculture, econometrics, biomedical research, signal processing, and medical diagnosis. Professor Rao was on the faculty in the Department of Statistics at Penn State from 1988 until his retirement in 2001, maintaining his outstanding research program, attracting leading researchers to the department, and advising Ph.D. students (his last of seven Penn State Ph.D. students was Jennifer Pittman, who graduated in 2000). He remained an active department member until 2010, welcoming distinguished visitors to our department and his Center for Multivariate Analysis. The C.R. and Bhargavi Rao Prize, awarded biennially by Penn State Statistics to a distinguished statistician, honors his legacy; it is one of the most prestigious awards given in our field.

Feature Story

Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) 2023 in Toronto, Canada

This year’s JSM in Toronto was another opportunity for members of our broader community to get together, to rekindle old relationships, and to form new connections. A few highlights from this year’s conference: 

Lan Wang

Professor Runze Li presented his Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS) Medallion Lecture, “Feature Screening for Ultra-High Dimensional Data: Methods and Applications.” Each year, eight Medallion Lecturers are chosen across all areas of statistics and probability by the IMS Committee on Special Lectures. The Medallion nomination is an honor and acknowledgment of a significant research contribution to one or more areas of research.

At the National Institute of Statistical Sciences (NISS) reception at JSM, Lingzhou Xue received the NISS Distinguished Service Award and Murali Haran received the NISS Distinguished Alumni Award for Cross-Disciplinary Research.

From John Haubrick, assistant teaching professor and instructional designer: “We had a great time showcasing our World Campus Applied Statistics programs. We enjoyed chatting with potential students who wanted to know more about our online offerings and the advantages of learning from our faculty. We also connected with many alumni, practitioners, and educators who were interested in our open educational resources and how they could apply them to improve their teaching and learning and to help with their careers. It was a rewarding experience to talk about our world-class courses and programs with a global audience.”

 

Annie Qu
Last, but certainly not least, the Penn State Department of Statistics reception was one of the highlights of the JSM, as usual, providing us with an opportunity not only to meet alumni—which includes Statistics program grads, undergrads, and postdocs, as well as Eberly College of Science alumni—but also former faculty and friends of the Penn State statistics department (we have many)! The room was packed, and the conversations were warm and enthusiastic, as always.

Alumni Updates

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 Kathryn Roeder (Ph.D. 1988) will be presenting the upcoming Krishnaiah Lecture on at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, November 30, in 102 Thomas Building. Kathryn serves as UPMC Professor of Statistics and Life Sciences within the Departments of Statistics and Data Science and Computational Biology at Carnegie Mellon University. She completed her Ph.D. in statistics at Penn State, and subsequently she held a faculty position at Yale University for six years before joining Carnegie Mellon in 1994. In recognition of her remarkable contributions to the field, she received the COPSS Presidents’ Award in 1997, a prestigious award given by the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS) to a leading statistician under the age of 40, and the Snedecor Award for her exceptional work in statistical applications. Her continued dedication to excellence was acknowledged in 2020 when she was honored with the COPSS Distinguished Achievement Award and Lectureship. She is a fellow of both the American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. In 2019, she became a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Owen Chase (B.S. 2022) took a gap year after graduating from Penn State, and after a successful graduate application season, he is attending the University of Texas at Austin in pursuit of a Ph.D. in astrophysics. During his gap year, he lived outside of Boston, where he worked at Lowe’s to earn some money and took up rock climbing (specifically bouldering). Owen received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. He said he was looking forward to getting back to school and research. His initial research will be in the clustering of galaxies at high redshift detected in the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) survey, a Penn State collaboration with UT Austin. The picture is from this summer, with the Pittsburgh skyline in the background.
Alumni who wish to share their news with the Department of Statistics can contact Terra Deyo at terra.deyo@psu.edu.

Faculty News

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Francesca Chiaromonte was recognized recently for her 25 years of service with Penn State. She is a professor of statistics and, since 2019, the Dorothy Foehr Huck and Lloyd Huck Chair in Statistics for the Life Sciences. She also has a courtesy affiliation with the Department of Public Health Sciences.
Maggie Niu
Congratulations to associate professor Maggie Niu on being awarded tenure. Her research focuses on the development of statistical models for a variety of applications, particularly in the health and social sciences. The methodological approaches she develops include Bayesian methods, social network models, and latent variable models. In her role as director of the Statistics Consulting Center in our department, Maggie plays a very important role in preparing our students for work on real-world problems, enhancing their communication skills, and providing researchers across the University with valuable statistical expertise.

Faculty Awards

Runze Li
Runze Li received the college’s Distinguished Faculty Mentoring Award in 2023. He was recognized for his dedication to mentoring students throughout and beyond. The graduate nominators praised his commitment to understanding the goals and aspirations of each student to provide personalized mentorship.
Lingzhou Xue
Lingzhou Xue was recognized as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association for his professional contributions in the areas of high-dimensional data, statistical learning, and nonparametric statistics, as well as for leadership and commitment to the field of statistical science. 
Patricia Buchanan received the 2022–2023 Teaching Innovation Award from the Eberly College of Science for STAT 460: Intermediate Applied Statistics, to modernize the course by using a new conceptual and computational approach promoted by experts in statistics education. This course will use real data, which will inspire a passion-driven statistics model, along with team-based learning

Staff News

Staff Excellence Award Ceremony

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The staff were recently recognized at the 2023 Eberly College of Science Staff Awards Celebration. The staff, along with Murali, dressed as characters from Finding Nemo for the luncheon, where Kati Taylor was recognized for her five years of service at Penn State and Melanie McKinney received the 2023 Department of Statistics Staff Excellence Award. She has been the administrative support coordinator in the statistics department since December 2021.

 

Murali Haran said, “We are very lucky to have Mel McKinney as our admin support coordinator. It was a stroke of good fortune for us to recruit her back to the department two years ago from the dean’s office; prior to her stint at the dean’s office she had served for many years as our grad program staff administrator. Mel has been an enormously positive influence on the efficiency and professionalism of our staff, and hence our department as a whole. I have heard multiple staff tell me just how supportive she is, and how she lends a sympathetic ear when they have challenges, and goes the extra mile in providing them with assistance with their duties. Our department has had some challenges in recent years, particularly with retaining staff, and Mel’s presence here has been really valuable to ensure continuity and competence, and to maintain an excellent climate. On a personal note, my job as department head has been infinitely easier thanks to Mel. Her staff excellence award is very well deserved. Congratulations to Mel!”

We are grateful to Amy Schmoeller for serving on the Staff Advisory Committee, which helped plan this event.

Research News

Edutainment in Statistics

Neil Hatfield

Dennis Pearl,and Larry Lesser from the University of Texas at El Paso have collaborated for nearly two decades on the use of songs, videos, cartoons, poems, quotes, puzzles, and other fun materials in teaching statistics. They recently completed a set of a dozen papers—between fall 2019 and summer 2023—on using edutainment in the teaching of introductory statistics topics like polling, experimentation, the census, descriptive statistics, confounding, correlation, regression, probability, estimation, and hypothesis testing. The set of papers covered more than a hundred learning objectives and were published in Teaching Statistics: An International Journal for Statistics and Data Science Teaching. The last of these papers, dealing with data visualization, was chosen to be the first discussion paper in the journal’s 45-year history. The papers provide lesson plan guidance including how to pair items with other active learning materials and, because the journal is international in scope, they go beyond U.S.-centric items to use examples intended for a global audience of statistics teachers. 

View the paper >>

Graduate News

Upon welcoming the incoming graduate students at orientation in August, the new Statistics Graduate Student Association (SGSA) officers—Abby Sine, Kaitlyn Fales, Wenlong Yang, and Won Gukicked off the semester with an SGSA welcome barbecue at the home of former SGSA President Kaitlyn Webb. Students from across all years in the program were able to attend and have some fun while getting ready for the fall semester to begin. As the semester has progressed, SGSA has been hosting biweekly workshops geared towards all graduate students, especially first and second years. So far, they have invited Stephen Berg and Nicole Lazar to speak about Roar/Roar Collab and open science research practices, respectively; most recently, they invited Career Services to discuss how to create a strong résumé/CV and cover letter to help students stand out in their internship and/or job applications. In addition, at the beginning of the semester, all first-year students were assigned a mentor, a student in their third year or above, to help them navigate the first year, including classes, finding an advisor, life as a grad student, and life in State College. SGSA is actively planning more events for the rest of the semester and remains a resource for graduate students of all years.

University Graduate Fellowships

In September, five students from the statistics department were recognized by the Graduate School as recipients of University Graduate Fellowships. Candace Todd and Xin Yu are University Graduate Fellows. Distinguished Graduate Fellows are Kanahela Muhandiramge Manushi Siriwardana, Verne M. Willaman Distinguished Graduate Fellowships in Science, Paul M. Doty Distinguished Graduate Fellowship; Minjun Kim, Verne M. Willaman Distinguished Graduate Fellowships in Science; Stephen B. Brumbach Distinguished Graduate Fellowship in Statistics; and Noah Feldman, Stephen B. Brumbach Distinguished Graduate Fellowship in Statistics. Congratulations!

Read the full story >>

 Candace Todd (B.S. 2023) spent her summer following graduation from Penn State hiking, sightseeing, and doing an internship with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Colorado, implementing uncertainty calculations into their metrics for measuring the amount of energy gained when using wake steering versus typical operation for a wind farm. She presented the work from her internship in front of some fellow NREL employees and was chosen to present again at a GEM three-day conference in September. She rejoined the department this fall as a graduate student.
natashia benjamin
Kaitlyn Webb has been awarded the Janet L. Norwood Science Achievement Graduate Fellowship. Additionally, she has been honored with the Wray Jackson Smith Scholarship from the American Statistical Association’s Government and Social Sciences Statistics sections. Kaitlyn is also an active student leader for Women+ in Statistics and Data Science, an organization dedicated to promoting the progress of women and gender minorities in the fields of statistics and data science. 
natashia benjamin

Undergraduate News

Justin Huang
Sejun (Jay) Song, a student pursuing a major in Statistics with a focus on Applied Statistics, was selected to participate in the 2023 Summer Undergraduate Research Experience program, organized by the Eberly College of Science. Guided by his research mentor, Prabhani Kuruppumullage Don, Sejun delved into an investigation of patterns within the general U.S. labor market and data analyst job market during the summer of 2023. In the pursuit of this research, Sejun was responsible for designing and executing a comprehensive survey aimed at exploring the various factors influencing employment status and satisfaction. He presented his findings at the prestigious Summer Research Poster Symposium held at Penn State.
Jun Sung Kim is an undergraduate student in our Statistics major (Statistics and Computing option) who won first place in Mathematical/Data Science Division at the Eberly College of Science poster presentation session held on Wednesday, October 11, for his poster “Age and political leaning predict COVID-19 vaccination status at a large, multi-campus, public university in Pennsylvania:  A cross-sectional survey.” Jun works with Prabhani Kuruppumullage and is a coauthor for a paper recently published in PLOS One with their collaborators at the Penn State College of Medicine.
On October 11, the Eberly College of Science held its annual Undergraduate Research Poster Exhibition and awarded prizes for the best posters in each of three categories: life sciences, physical sciences, and mathematical sciences. The team of Robert Chappel, Sean Burke, Taryn McHugh, Luqi Jiao Emanuele, and Aisiri Cherrimane Narendra (team presentation) took second place in the mathematical sciences category with “Creating Web Apps to Enhance Learning Outcomes in Undergraduate Statistics and Data Science.”

 

Statistics Club

The Statistics Club held a résumé workshop in preparation for Penn State’s annual career fair. Club member Abeer Mathur (B.S. 2024) gave a short presentation and tips on constructing a résumé. The Statistics Club also had speakers from Fast Enterprises, a leading government software consultant, present job and internship opportunities with their company. The National Security Agency (NSA) brought a real enigma machine and demonstrated its use and presented opportunities to members of the club. The Statistics Club also participated in the Eberly College of Science involvement fair and held a study night for students as they prepared for upcoming exams.

Club Officers

Sean Burke, president
Jordan Skinner, vice president
Abeer Mathur, vice president shadow
Devansh Agarwal, treasurer
Rahil Radia, secretary
Erik Ketterer, corporate outreach
Anthony Landmesser, event coordinator
Zeynep Demir, webmaster
Jessica Payne, social chair

Postdoctoral News

New Postdocs

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Emrah Altun joined the statistics department as a postdoctoral fellow in September 2023. He received his Ph.D. in statistics at Hacettepe University, in Turkey, where he worked on heavy-tailed and skewed distributions under the supervision of Professor Huseyin Tatlidil. As a postdoc, Emrah is working with Professor Qunhua Li on differential networks for gene expression data. 

Haotian Xu
Lei Wang joined the statistics department as a postdoctoral fellow in October 2023. He received his Ph.D. in optimization at the Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he worked with Professor Xin Liu. As a postdoc, Lei is working with professors Runze Li and Le Bao on developing statistical methods and theory for high-dimensional data analysis.
Subhankar Bhadra joined the statistics department as a postdoctoral fellow in August He received his Ph.D. in Statistics at North Carolina State University, where he was advised by Srijan Sengupta. He is currently working under the supervision of Michael Schweinberger.

Department Events

Public Lecture Series

Francesca Chiaromonte
The latest edition of the Department of Statistics’ Public Lecture Series in September featured Professor Francesca Chiaromonte on “What can shapes teach us? Leveraging functional data in biomedical applications.” With examples of ways in which functional data manifests in real-world scenarios, Professor Chiaromonte provided insights into how such data are analyzed. She discussed applications of these ideas to  problems in genomics to the analysis of the spread of COVID-19 in Italy. The Q and A  session following the lecture was moderated by statistics graduate students Kaitlyn Fales and Olivia Beck. For those who missed it, the video of Francesca’s lecture is available on the Department of Statistics YouTube channel, which also has previous talks in the series. The next public talk is planned for spring 2024.

Fall Picnic

Jung In at picnic
We had our fall department picnic on a gorgeous September day on the lovely Penn State Arboretum lawn. Faculty, staff, and graduate students gathered for conversation and a catered picnic. All enjoyed the delicious food, beautiful weather, and casual time together!

Thanks to Kati Taylor and all of the other staff for organizing the picnic, and thanks to everyone who attended!

Keystone State Statistics Symposium

welcome table
The first edition of the Keystone State Statistics Symposium was hosted by the Department of Statistics at Penn State on October 7 and 8, 2023. This symposium was intended as an opportunity to bring together statistics departments from across Pennsylvania. It was organized by faculty at three universities: Penn State (Lingzhou Xue and Murali Haran), Temple (Alan Karr), and the University of Pittsburgh (Satish Iyengar and Yu Cheng). There were close to 100 registered participants, and the program featured a keynote address, 12 invited talks, over 20 poster presentations on a wide array of topics, and multiple opportunities for conversation and connections. We extend our thanks to all the participants, speakers, and staff members who contributed to this successful event. The keynote talk by Professor Yanyuan Ma is available on the Department of Statistics YouTube channel.

Tussey Mountainback

 Another year and another group of runners from the Department of Statistics teamed up to conquer the Tussey Mountainback Relay, a 50-mile relay race traversing the fire roads throughout Rothrock State Forest. The course winds through Whipple Dam State Park, Alan Seeger Natural Area, Penn Roosevelt State Park, Colyer Lake, and Bear Meadows Natural Area. The team, named Ridge Regression, completed 12 legs of varying length and elevation in 7:51:23 and consisted of (left to right) Omar Hagrass, Stephen Berg, Cornelius Fritz, John Haubrick, Sam Baugh, Alyssa Hu, and Samantha Roth. David Hunter successfully ran the 50k individual race.

 

 

Graduating Students

The following list of graduates were awarded degrees in the summer of 2023. Students awarded degrees in the fall 2023 semester will be announced in the spring 2024 newsletter. On behalf of everyone in the Department of Statistics and Eberly College of Science, congratulations to all of our graduating students!
Graduate Degrees Awarded

Doctorate in Statistics, Summer 2023

Bokgyeong Kang
Shuo Shuo Liu
Samidha Sudhakar Shetty
Zhaoxue Tong
Siddharth Vishwanath
Zhe Zhang
Qi Zhang
Master of Applied Statistics, Summer 2023, University Park Campus
Mia Cavener
Master of Applied Statistics, Summer 2023, World Campus
Fernando Aguilar Islas
Rebekah Bright
Robert Crossgrove
Tina Dhekial-Phukan
Tamba Fayiah
Melissa Gosse
Maren Jensen
Raphael Kinney
Heather Pruitt
Craig Sinkler
Michael Swarlis
Michael Tran
Michael Turpyn
William Walters
Kristin Whitmeyer
Le Yang
Yaozhou Zhu
Undergraduate Degrees Awarded

Bachelor of Science in Statistics, Summer 2023

Dylan DeJean
Xuanying Zhao
Stuart Vas
Divyesh Johri

Newsletter Credits

Editors: Terra Deyo, Andrew Ferguson, Jordan Futrick, Nicole Lazar, and Murali Haran
Design and Development: Mike Fleck and Bob Carey

If you have any corrections or additions for this issue, or items for the next issue, please email Terra Deyo at terra.deyo@psu.edu.