Department of Statistics Spring 2021 Newsletter
I would like to begin with a note to our new graduates: Congratulations! You persevered through a dark, isolating, and challenging period to complete your degrees. Commencement ceremonies are always wonderful and moving events, but this one was especially so — seeing all the masked students, as well as family, staff, and faculty, present and participating in the socially distant ceremony was both poignant and triumphant. The ceremony signified the resilience of the students and the entire campus community in the face of unprecedented challenges. It was a proud moment for all of us and we are especially proud of our new graduates. As we begin to emerge from a dark period, on behalf of the entire department, and particularly the faculty, we wish you the very best as you embark on your post-degree lives. To all other students who are still here: Congratulations on making it through a very challenging year. We eagerly look forward to interacting with you in the coming years.
The Department of Statistics has managed to thrive in spite of all the logistical, financial, and other types of challenges presented by the pandemic this past year. Our success is in large part thanks to the efforts of the many individuals in our department, students, staff, and faculty, who ensured that the department ran smoothly while also maintaining a welcoming environment as we conducted most of our business online. In the past few weeks some of our staff, faculty, and students have begun trickling back into their offices. This fall, Penn State is planning on essentially returning to how the university was pre-pandemic, with all in-person classes and no masking or vaccination mandates. So far it seems many members of our department are thrilled to return though there is also a fair bit of apprehension given the scary news about the delta variant of the virus. Given recent successes with working remotely, it is already apparent that many in the department will choose to work more from home than they did before the pandemic. But with all the changes and uncertainties, I am optimistic that we will manage any surprises along the way and our fall semester will go smoothly.
Before signing off, I would like to take a moment to thank all of you for helping ensure that the Department of Statistics remains a close-knit community even through difficult times. I can only imagine an even stronger sense of community once we are back together on campus. To our alumni: we missed seeing you at the usual times for reunions (for instance the Joint Statistical Meetings) but hopefully we’ll get to meet again very soon.
With best wishes,
Murali Haran
University Park, Pennsylvania
July 20, 2021
Student Project Highlight
The team meeting on Zoom. From left to right: Jeffrey Lunger and Isaac Wright. Bottom: Mallet James
A student-led project, led by Penn State Statistics graduate student Isaac Wright, together with undergraduate students Mallet James, Jeffrey Lunger, and Kyle Kroboth, and advised by Associate Teaching Professor of Statistics Dr. Andrew Wiesner, have developed a software that uses Machine Learning (ML) applied to daily fantasy sports betting. With the fantasy sports industry projected to grow to $48 billion by 2027, it is not hard to imagine that ML tools and software could provide a value-added service by operators. “As a group who enjoys both playing fantasy sports and machine learning, it felt natural to build a project around our dual interest,” says Isaac. Thus, the idea of building consistent winning fantasy sports lineups for the Major League Baseball through a data-driven approach was born.
This student-led project has already yielded concrete results. The group created a website for people interested to follow their results and progress, and they also plan to release an interactive web app where people can play around with building their own fantasy sports lineups using the group’s algorithms. The project, however, was not without challenges. After a few weeks since the start of the project, Penn State shifted to remote learning and because of adapting to the working environment and life during COVID, the project was put on pause for several months. After restarting, the project was scaled back from building software for the MLB and NFL to building only the MLB software.
According to Isaac, the most rewarding aspect of the project was watching everyone come together and give time to the project, driven by their passion for sports and data science. “The true beauty of such projects,” writes Dr. Wiesner, “is that the success falls solely on the self-motivation of those involved. There is no money, no credit, just the willingness to learn and improve their analytical skills.” As for the future, the team has big plans; they have talked of building a company around the proprietary software or writing a paper and making everything available through the blog. Either way, they are excited to see what they can do.
Alumni Highlights
Edward Chen (BS, ‘17)
Edward Chen graduated in December 2017 with dual Bachelor of Science degrees in Computer Science and Statistics with Actuarial Science Option.
During his time at Penn State, he worked with Professor Ethan Fang on developing novel machine learning, including deep learning, methods for both understanding the content of terabytes of YouTube videos and for predicting various housing prices in the California area. His honors thesis was titled “Applications of Machine Learning”. He had also spent time with Professor James Z. Wang on improving existing image saliency methods being used in computational photography research.
Of all his courses at Penn State, Edward most enjoyed STAT 462 (Regression Analysis) since it provided him with strong foundational knowledge necessary for understanding more advanced machine learning methods. The project-based component of the course was also valuable as it provided him with useful real-world experience in analyzing datasets with statistical methods.
Edward is currently finishing up his thesis-based MS in Robotics degree at Carnegie Mellon University. He will be starting a PhD in Computer Science at Stanford University in Fall 2021. He credits much of his growth to all of the professors, friends, and family who have continually offered and provided him guidance throughout his academic journey – most notably to Professors Ethan Fang and Murali Haran in the PSU Department of Statistics.
Yawen Guan (PhD, ’17)
Dr. Guan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics at University of Nebraska – Lincoln. Having already earned a BS in Mathematics and Finance from Penn State, Yawen graduated from Penn State Statistics in 2017 and spent two years at the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute and North Carolina State as a postdoctoral fellow. In her current position, she teaches and conducts research in modeling spatial and spatiotemporal data, developing computer model emulation and calibration methods, as well as computational methods for large data. Her area of research allows her to work on a variety of interesting and challenging problems – ranging from estimating ice thickness on the Antarctic, modeling deformation of sea ice on the Arctic, to exploring air quality data taken by mobile sensors on Google Street View vehicles and national monitoring networks.
During her time at Penn State Statistics, Yawen enjoyed the friendly and supportive atmosphere and intellectually stimulating conversations. Also, thanks to the diverse research profile of faculty, she thinks students are likely to find a research interest match and have many opportunities to get exposed to different areas through events and courses. Through the program, Yawen Guan met lots of friends and her academic family, who continue to provide her valuable advice and support.
Finally, she has a few words for currents students: “Be proactive! Talk to other students and professors and learn about what they are working on. Lay out schedules for research projects and course work; give yourself small daily tasks to complete, these baby steps will eventually help you achieve your goals!”
Alumni Updates
Won Chang (PhD in Statistics, 2014; advisor: Murali Haran): I am currently an Assistant Professor in the Division of Statistics and Data Science at the University of Cincinnati. My first PhD Student, Saumya Bhatnagar, has received ENVR Student Paper Award from the ASA Section on Statistics and the Environment as the first-place winner, for her first manuscript “Computer Model Calibration with Time Series Data using Deep Learning and Quantile Regression”. My two other graduate students are working on their manuscripts as well. Advising is perhaps the most exciting part of my career!
Retirements
Bruce has always cared deeply about teaching, investing a lot of time and energy into his students, with a steady stream of them showing up to his office hours each week. He has also always been ready to step in to teach any course that would be helpful to the department. In addition to serving on our faculty, Bruce has also played an important role in local politics, serving as a supervisor for Harris Township since 2015. Fortunately, Bruce plans to live in town and still teach for us even if in a reduced capacity, so we will continue to see him regularly. Congrats, Bruce, and glad we’ll still see you!
In addition to being a world class researcher, Don has been a dedicated teacher and mentor, willing to spend countless hours helping students. He has always been extremely friendly and generous with his time, especially with younger researchers. It is hard to think of anyone more willing to discuss a troublesome mathematical problem with anyone who walks into his office, especially if the problem involves integration, matrix theory, or special functions. Many in the department and around the world can personally attest to having been the beneficiary of his generosity, including with non-academic issues like finance (Don knows more about investment than most) and housing. Most of all, he is always ready for long and entertaining chats, and he seems to have an endless list of quotes and anecdotes. Now that he has relocated to Massachusetts, his presence in the department will be greatly missed. Congratulations, Don, and thank you for your years as a scholar, educator, colleague, and mentor. We hope you will come back to see us.
Undergraduate News
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.
Graduate News
Grad Cup 2020
In a repeat of their 2019 performance, a team of graduate students in the statistics department successfully defended their first-place title at the Grad Cup 2020, a multi-week wellness challenge. Team Statistics (members: Alex Zhao, Alina Kuvelkar, Claire Kelling, Sarah Shy, Ian Laga) secured a first-place win against 18 other graduate student teams made up of graduate and professional students across other Penn State departments. The team excelled in a variety of COVID-friendly wellness activities, including various physical, reading, and social challenges. Team Statistics (members: Alex Zhao, Alina Kuvelkar, Jay Brown, Samidha Shetty, Sarah Shy) also took part in the Grad Cup 2021, also held virtually in March of 2021, placing in the top 3 during the virtual trivia portion of the event.
Graduate Honors and Awards
Claire has also been nominated for the 2020 Graduate Student Homecoming Court, where she hopes to make a difference as graduate student chair of the Penn State Student Fee Board.
Sayali also received the 2021 Harold F. Martin Graduate Assistant Outstanding Teaching Award in recognition of outstanding teaching performance.
Xiufan has also received the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS) Hannan Graduate Student Travel Award. This award allows students to attend any future IMS co-sponsored meeting.
World Campus News
Our online programs continue to thrive, with an active Masters in Applied Statistics (MAS) and graduate certificate in applied statistics. We also offer a wide variety of undergraduate courses
through World Campus, ranging from introductory statistics to such cutting-edge topics as statistical analysis with Python. To meet the needs of modern students, we are always looking for fresh course offerings, to provide them with exciting and relevant content, especially in electives.
Prospective students show strong interest in our programs, reflecting the reputation of the PSU Department of Statistics and the excellence of the programs themselves.
Nicole Lazar, Director of Online Programs
Prabhani Kuruppumullage Don, Assistant Director of Online Programs
Lazar and Slavkovic Nominated IMS Fellows
Professor Aleksandra Slavkovic was nominated Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS) Fellow “for novel contributions to the development of statistical disclosure techniques and algebraic methods, for contributions to graduate research, and for contributions to editorial and other publication activities of the IMS and other statistical organizations.” This is a prestigious recognition and speaks to their significant contribution to the profession.
Dr. Slavkovic was also appointed as the next Editor of the ASA journal Statistics and Public Policy, which applies statistical methodology to problems in the realm of public policy and /or relevant political science. The journal publishes open access research that address international, national, or local policy questions, with an emphasis on application rather than methodological novelty.
Dr. Li’s research on the emotional dependency on vaping has also been recently featured on Penn State News and other media. This interdisciplinary research, involving several institutions across the country and Dr. Li’s advisee, doctoral candidate Zhanrui Cai, aims to understand how emotions are associated with, or can cause, smoking relapse, and ultimately may shape programs to help people quit smoking permanently.
Dr. Xue was also recently elected publication officer for the Nonparametric Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association.
Staff News
After this rewarding experience, Bob decided to pursue a Master’s degree with Penn State World Campus. “Before doing this, I hadn’t considered going to grad school, but I got an email from Penn State about the data analytics master’s program, and the timing was right to do it. I’ve started taking classes and really enjoy it,” Bob said.
Penn State DataFest 2021
This year’s DataFest was held virtually on gather.town and attracted 106 participants, 22 teams from 5 different institutions. Students worked on a medical dataset from the Rocky Mountain Poison & Drug Safety Center and were judged on a number of criteria.
Team The Security Blankets from Pacific Lutheran University dominated the competition. Honorable mentions for Best Data Visualization were awarded to Team Hoping for a C++ from Penn State, for Best Insight to Team Jailbreak from Penn State, and for Best Use of External Data to Team Last But Not Least Squares, and Team Graceful Gazelles both from Penn State.
Academic Year 2020-2021 PhD Graduates
Thesis Title: The Integration of Multiple Data Sources for HIV/AIDS Incidence and Prevalence Estimation
Advisor: Le Bao
First Job: Mathematical Statistician, FDA CDRH
Bingyuan Liu, PhD
Thesis Title: Topics on Nonconvex Learning
Advisor: Lingzhou Xue
First Job: Data Scientist, Google LLC
Dhanushi Wijeyakulasuriya, PhD
Thesis Title: Modern Algorithm Based Approaches for Modeling Animal Movement
Advisors: Ephraim Hanks and Benjamin Shaby
First Job: Data Scientist, Microsoft
Hillary Koch, PhD
Thesis Title: Statistical Methods for the Analysis of Multi-conditional Genomic Data
Advisor: Qunhua Li
First Job: Preclinical Statistician, Moderna
Jiawei Wen, PhD
Thesis Title: Multi-block ADMM Algorithms for High-Dimensional Sparse Estimation
Advisors: Runze Li and Xingyuan Fang
First Job: Research Scientist, Facebook
Lin Qiu, PhD
Thesis Title: Probabilistic Statistical Learning Methods for Multimodal Data
Advisors: Vernon M. Chinchilli and Lin Lin
First Job: Statistical Scientist. Genentech
Meridith Bartley, PhD
Thesis Title: Advances in Ecological Statistics
Advisor: Ephraim Hanks
First Job: Statistician, United States Geological Survey
Michelle Nixon, PhD
Thesis Title: Privacy Preserving Methods in the Era of Big Data: New Methods and Connections
Advisor: Aleksandra Slavkovic
First Job: Assistant Research Professor, Penn State
Academic Year 2020-2021 MAS Graduates
Andrew Warner
David Chen
Jeffrey Yan
Junzhu Fu
Sean Gernon
Shan Li
Sidharth Agrawal
Tinghua Chen
Tyler Garner
Yingfang Wu
Yun Li
Academic Year 2020-2021 BS Graduates
Abdulrahman Albabtain
Makayla Ashe
Joel Bacci
John Behler
Qingxuan Bu
Tre Butler
Matthew Cash
David Chen
Jiacheng Chen
Gregory Coffey
Yirong Fang
Yiyun Gong
Vivek Gopalan
Jingzhe Han
Yu Feng Hsu
Leah Hunt
Maura Jaeger
Sung Ug Joo
Ken Kalbach
Robert Kemp
Soung Mun Kim
Kyu Yeon Kwon
Zhi Li
Zerui Li
Deric Liang
Calvin Lien
Jianzhuo Liu
Jizhe Meng
Gary Modzelewski
Izzidin Oakes
Yimu Pan
Mackenzie Park
Nathaniel Setar
Chenhui Shen
Yiwei Shen
Simran Singh
Richard Smeltzer
Franklyn Snyderman
Brian Stella
Julia Trigg
Lauren Walko
Zhenyu Wang
Cathy Wang
Zeyuan Wang
Ziming Wang
David Weiss
Jiawei Wu
Yao Xiao
Jianhui Xiong
Weilun Xu
Wanxuan Xu
Ningxin Xu
Yue Yu
Sunrunyi Yuan
Penghao Zeng
Yiyan Zhang
Xiaodan Zhang
Xigang Zhang
Tianhao Zhao
Data Sciences
Yiyun Gong
Dae Hoon Gwak
Felix Ke
Dylan Kiczales
Jiahong Lu
Yingduo Luo
Riya Mishra
Chinmay Pendse
Yuheng Peng
Mason Petrosky
Zhejing Shi
Randy Silverman
Chenxi Su
Nathan Sylvain
Zeyuan Wang
Jingyi Zhao
How to donate
Get involved
Credits
If you have any corrections or additions for this issue, or items for the next issue, please email Alice Chersoni ajc7483@psu.edu
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