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The Newsletter of the Department of Statistics

Sports Analytics Club places two students in the pros

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A good number of our students indicate an interest in sports statistics. These jobs are extremely difficult to come by for various reasons — few professional teams exist, not all employ a data science team, and those that do, often have fairly small teams. The result is a highly competitive market.

Despite these challenges our Sports Analytics Club (formed in the fall of 2019) has recently placed two of its members in this field. Mallet James (2021) was recently hired as a Data Scientist for the Detroit Pistons and Sameer Sapre (2020) was hired as an Assistant, Baseball Projects, with the Seattle Mariners.

Both graduated with degrees in Data Science. Having one graduate in such a position is nice and having two graduates get such positions is exciting; two in different major sports is truly outstanding. We are thrilled for Mallet and Sameer. These outcomes also provide a pathway for future students who aspire to work in this arena.
Advised by Associate Teaching Professor of Statistics, Andy Wiesner, The Penn State Sports Analytics Club is a student generated organization started in Fall 2019. Students across various academic disciplines contribute to the club success. Two members have successfully gained employment with a major professional sports team in data analytics, while several others have developed informative analytical websites. These sites plus more information such as how to join can be found here on the club’s website.

Shiny Apps Team Successful at Poster Competition

Shiny Apps Team Successful at Poster Competition

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The Department of Statistics’ Shiny App team was successful in the 2021 Undergraduate Research Poster Exhibition hosted this fall by the Eberly College of Science.

Under the guidance of Dennis Pearl and Neil Hatfield in the BOAST program, undergraduate students Shravani Samala, Lydia Bednarczyk, Tina Tu, Jiayue He, Yudan Zhang, and Adam Poleski — were awarded second place in the mathematical sciences category.

Known at the competition as the R Shiny Research Group, the students presented their winning work from the summer, including apps exploring counting techniques, maximum likelihood estimation, probability applications, and chi-square goodness-of-fit testing.

Read the full story here.

2022 Undergraduate Honors and Awards

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Deric Liang (senior, Statistics) was recognized at commencement as Student Marshal among Statistics Majors in the class of 2021.  In addition to Deric’s demonstrated excellence in coursework, he has also been engaged in several research projects, completed an internship, and a number of extracurricular interests.  In 2019, Deric was one of nine students selected for the National Science Foundation Ukraine REU studying the World Health Organization’s World Mental Health survey modeling risk factors for mental health diagnoses.  Deric also worked with Professor Qi Li (Economics) to build a data set of single-family loans from mortgage databases and investigated the extent to which face-to-face lenders may or may not discriminate against minorities compared to algorithmic lenders.  Additionally, Deric completed an internship with Bates White Economic Consulting, worked closely with Professors Francis Wham and Matthew Beckman as an Undergraduate TA in STAT 380, was actively engaged in THON, and has been President of the Penn State Glee Club.  Deric selected Professor Matthew Beckman as Faculty Marshal to escort him at Commencement.

Shunqi Zhang (senior, Data Science) was recognized at commencement as Student Marshal for the Statistical Modeling Data Sciences Major in the class of 2021.  In addition to Shunqi’s demonstrated excellence in coursework, he has also completed an internship, and participated in several research projects.  During Shunqi’s internship with Qingbo Big Data Technology Company he implemented a text mining algorithm to categorize different types of popular events, visualize the public attitude of and trend, and draft a synopsis—an experience that sparked an interest in more advanced study of networks and machine learning.  In 2019, Shunqi joined a team of undergraduate researchers supervised by Professor Dennis Pearl who developed educational web applets using R Shiny for use in statistics education research.  Shunqi then extended this work with a second research project implementing Bayesian Networks to evaluate learning outcomes using log file data from such interactive web applets.  Shunqi selected Professor Dennis Pearl as Faculty Marshal to escort him at Commencement.

Spring 2022 Student Marshals

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Owen Chase
Owen Chase was the student marshal for the Eberly College of Science during Penn State’s spring commencement ceremonies on May 8, 2022. Chase graduates summa cum laude with a 4.0 grade-point average and a bachelor’s degrees in astronomy and astrophysics as well as statistics. He has received numerous awards including the 2021 Astronaut Scholarship, the Homer F. Braddock College of Science Memorial Scholarship from 2018 to 2022, the Academic Excellence Scholarship from 2018 to 2022, the 2021 Evan Pugh Scholar Award, and the 2020 President Sparks Award. Chase was also a Schreyer Scholar from 2018 to 2022 and was honored with the President’s Freshman Award in 2019. Read more >>
Grant Hopkins
Grant Hopkins was the student marshal in Statistics representing the Statistics Department during Penn State’s spring commencement ceremonies on May 8, 2022. Hopkins graduates with a master’s degree in Applied Statistics and a bachelor’s degrees in Statistics, Mathematics, and Finance. He collaborated with Associate Professor Le Bao and made several breakthroughs on the early detection of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS).
Anna Leon
Owen Chase was the student marshal for the Eberly College of Science during Penn State’s spring commencement ceremonies on May 8, 2022. Chase graduates summa cum laude with a 4.0 grade-point average and a bachelor’s degrees in astronomy and astrophysics as well as statistics. He has received numerous awards including the 2021 Astronaut Scholarship, the Homer F. Braddock College of Science Memorial Scholarship from 2018 to 2022, the Academic Excellence Scholarship from 2018 to 2022, the 2021 Evan Pugh Scholar Award, and the 2020 President Sparks Award. Chase was also a Schreyer Scholar from 2018 to 2022 and was honored with the President’s Freshman Award in 2019. Read more >>

Sports Analytics Club places two students in the pros

,

A good number of our students indicate an interest in sports statistics. These jobs are extremely difficult to come by for various reasons — few professional teams exist, not all employ a data science team, and those that do, often have fairly small teams. The result is a highly competitive market.

Despite these challenges our Sports Analytics Club (formed in the fall of 2019) has recently placed two of its members in this field. Mallet James (2021) was recently hired as a Data Scientist for the Detroit Pistons and Sameer Sapre (2020) was hired as an Assistant, Baseball Projects, with the Seattle Mariners.

Both graduated with degrees in Data Science. Having one graduate in such a position is nice and having two graduates get such positions is exciting; two in different major sports is truly outstanding. We are thrilled for Mallet and Sameer. These outcomes also provide a pathway for future students who aspire to work in this arena.
Advised by Associate Teaching Professor of Statistics, Andy Wiesner, The Penn State Sports Analytics Club is a student generated organization started in Fall 2019. Students across various academic disciplines contribute to the club success. Two members have successfully gained employment with a major professional sports team in data analytics, while several others have developed informative analytical websites. These sites plus more information such as how to join can be found here on the club’s website.

Shiny Apps Team Successful at Poster Competition

Shiny Apps Team Successful at Poster Competition

,

The Department of Statistics’ Shiny App team was successful in the 2021 Undergraduate Research Poster Exhibition hosted this fall by the Eberly College of Science.

Under the guidance of Dennis Pearl and Neil Hatfield in the BOAST program, undergraduate students Shravani Samala, Lydia Bednarczyk, Tina Tu, Jiayue He, Yudan Zhang, and Adam Poleski — were awarded second place in the mathematical sciences category.

Known at the competition as the R Shiny Research Group, the students presented their winning work from the summer, including apps exploring counting techniques, maximum likelihood estimation, probability applications, and chi-square goodness-of-fit testing.

Read the full story here.

2022 Undergraduate Honors and Awards

, ,

Deric Liang (senior, Statistics) was recognized at commencement as Student Marshal among Statistics Majors in the class of 2021.  In addition to Deric’s demonstrated excellence in coursework, he has also been engaged in several research projects, completed an internship, and a number of extracurricular interests.  In 2019, Deric was one of nine students selected for the National Science Foundation Ukraine REU studying the World Health Organization’s World Mental Health survey modeling risk factors for mental health diagnoses.  Deric also worked with Professor Qi Li (Economics) to build a data set of single-family loans from mortgage databases and investigated the extent to which face-to-face lenders may or may not discriminate against minorities compared to algorithmic lenders.  Additionally, Deric completed an internship with Bates White Economic Consulting, worked closely with Professors Francis Wham and Matthew Beckman as an Undergraduate TA in STAT 380, was actively engaged in THON, and has been President of the Penn State Glee Club.  Deric selected Professor Matthew Beckman as Faculty Marshal to escort him at Commencement.

Shunqi Zhang (senior, Data Science) was recognized at commencement as Student Marshal for the Statistical Modeling Data Sciences Major in the class of 2021.  In addition to Shunqi’s demonstrated excellence in coursework, he has also completed an internship, and participated in several research projects.  During Shunqi’s internship with Qingbo Big Data Technology Company he implemented a text mining algorithm to categorize different types of popular events, visualize the public attitude of and trend, and draft a synopsis—an experience that sparked an interest in more advanced study of networks and machine learning.  In 2019, Shunqi joined a team of undergraduate researchers supervised by Professor Dennis Pearl who developed educational web applets using R Shiny for use in statistics education research.  Shunqi then extended this work with a second research project implementing Bayesian Networks to evaluate learning outcomes using log file data from such interactive web applets.  Shunqi selected Professor Dennis Pearl as Faculty Marshal to escort him at Commencement.

Spring 2022 Student Marshals

,

Owen Chase
Owen Chase was the student marshal for the Eberly College of Science during Penn State’s spring commencement ceremonies on May 8, 2022. Chase graduates summa cum laude with a 4.0 grade-point average and a bachelor’s degrees in astronomy and astrophysics as well as statistics. He has received numerous awards including the 2021 Astronaut Scholarship, the Homer F. Braddock College of Science Memorial Scholarship from 2018 to 2022, the Academic Excellence Scholarship from 2018 to 2022, the 2021 Evan Pugh Scholar Award, and the 2020 President Sparks Award. Chase was also a Schreyer Scholar from 2018 to 2022 and was honored with the President’s Freshman Award in 2019. Read more >>
Grant Hopkins
Grant Hopkins was the student marshal in Statistics representing the Statistics Department during Penn State’s spring commencement ceremonies on May 8, 2022. Hopkins graduates with a master’s degree in Applied Statistics and a bachelor’s degrees in Statistics, Mathematics, and Finance. He collaborated with Associate Professor Le Bao and made several breakthroughs on the early detection of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS).
Anna Leon
Owen Chase was the student marshal for the Eberly College of Science during Penn State’s spring commencement ceremonies on May 8, 2022. Chase graduates summa cum laude with a 4.0 grade-point average and a bachelor’s degrees in astronomy and astrophysics as well as statistics. He has received numerous awards including the 2021 Astronaut Scholarship, the Homer F. Braddock College of Science Memorial Scholarship from 2018 to 2022, the Academic Excellence Scholarship from 2018 to 2022, the 2021 Evan Pugh Scholar Award, and the 2020 President Sparks Award. Chase was also a Schreyer Scholar from 2018 to 2022 and was honored with the President’s Freshman Award in 2019. Read more >>

2022 Alumni Updates

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Andreas Artemiou (PhD 2010, adviser: Bing Li) was promoted to Reader in Statistics in the School of Mathematics at Cardiff University, UK. The position of “Reader” in the British system is equivalent to that of a high-level Associate Professor. Congratulations Andreas!

Won Chang (PhD 2014, adviser: Murali Haran) Won will be tenured and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in August 2022 at the University of Cincinnati. Won started a half-year sabbatical in Korea as a visiting scholar, invited by the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in Korea, one of the flagship government-funded research institutes in the country. As well, Won will serve as a moderator for the event, “Asian Forward JSM 2022 Career Development Workshop” at JSM 2022 in Washington D.C.

Kiranmoy Das (PhD 2011, advisers: Rongling Wu and Runze Li) received the 2021 Prof. C. R. Rao National Award in Statistics for Young Statisticians. This prize is awarded by the Government of India and was presented on June 29, 2021. Congratulations to Kiranmoy!

John Hughes (PhD 2011, advisers: John Fricks and Murali Haran) was recently hired as an Associate Professor with tenure in Lehigh University’s new College of Health. In addition to collaborating with new colleagues at Lehigh, John continues doing research on methods for dependent data, Bayesian methods, and statistical computing.

Surajit Ray (PhD 2003, adviser: Bruce Lindsay) was recently promoted to Professor of Statistics at the University of Glasgow, UK. His research interests are in the area of model selection, the theory and geometry of mixture models and functional data analysis. Core areas of methodological research include multivariate mixtures, structural equations models, high-dimensional clustering, and functional clustering. Congratulations Surajit on your well-deserved promotion!

James Russell (PhD 2017, advisers: Ephraim Hanks and Murali Haran) James received tenure at Muhlenberg College.

Ji-Ping Wang (PhD 2003, adviser: Bruce Lindsay) is a professor in statistics and adjunct professor in Molecular BioSciences at Northwestern University. He will be starting his third year as Chairperson in the Department of Statistics and Data Science at Northwestern University in fall 2022.

Qing (Wendy) Wang & Ivan Simeonov

Qing (Wendy) Wang & Ivan Simeonov

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Qing (Wendy) Wang

(PhD 2012, adviser: Bruce Lindsay)

Wendy Wang is currently an Associate Professor of Statistics and co-director of the data science program at Wellesley College. Besides teaching undergraduate courses in statistics, she enjoys working with students on statistical research projects. So far, she has supervised over ten students through senior honors theses and summer research programs, and has published six papers with undergraduate coauthors in refereed journals such as Statistics in Medicine, Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, and Statistics & Probability Letters. On a personal note, her husband, Ivan Simeonov (PhD in statistics, 2012), and she recently welcomed thei second child in March. Wendy says life has been busier than ever, but in a joyful way. Congratulations to Wendy and Ivan!

Ivan Simeonov

(PhD 2012, advisers: John Fricks and Francesca Chiaromonte)

Ivan is currently working as an Assistant Vice President, Business Insurance Analytics and Research team in Travelers Insurance. He started his career in Personal Insurance (PI) and spent five years and half in various roles, focusing on building models to predict observed pure premium (yearly losses) for auto insurance as well as homeowners’ insurance. Ivan spent the last four years in Business Insurance (BI) and currently I he manages a team of five people. Ivan is responsible for BI Distribution, Sales, and Customer Analytics models. The type of work they perform may involve ad-hoc analysis, model monitoring of implemented models, as well as creating new models with different types of responses (numeric, multinomial, logistic,) as well as predictors (categoricals, high cardinality categorical, free form text, numeric).