Statistical Science
Students in the MSS program can submit a Portfolio of Work for their MS completion exam. The MS Portfolio Award is given for outstanding Portfolios, recognizing excellence in applied statistics and presentation. Nominations for the award are made and assessed by the Portfolio advisor, Dr. Yue Jiang, and the MS Director, Dr. Funda Gunes. Due to this year’s exceptionally strong pool of portfolios, the committee has bestowed multiple award winners and honorable mentions. More information is available on the MSS Portfolio page… read more about Recognizing MSS Portfolio Winners »
David Dunson, Arts & Sciences Professor of Statistical Science, has been named among top scientists in the field of mathematics for the 2023 ranking of researchers at Research.com. David Dunson’s scholarly influence combines theoretical and applied research in analyzing complex and high-dimensional data while characterizing uncertainty in inferences through probability distributions via Bayesian methods. He has made pioneering research contributions with a rich variety of popular statistical inference methods based on… read more about David Dunson named among top scientists in the field of mathematics »
Surya Tokdar, professor and interim chair of Statistical Science at Duke, has been named a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS). The organization’s May 2 announcement notes Tokdar’s intellectual leadership in several fields of Bayesian inference, including posterior consistency, just-right smoothing, and frequentist properties of Bayesian estimates, as well as his development of novel models for analyzing neuroscience data. Founded in 1935, IMS is a membership organization devoted to “fostering the… read more about Surya Tokdar named IMS fellow »
Of our 44 outstanding graduates, nine will continue into Statistics, Biostatistics, and other STEM-related programs at other prestigious universities. These students received a combined two dozen Ph.D. admissions offers, with each student receiving at least one offer. We are so proud of this impressive group of scholars: Row 1 Jiongran Wang - Texas A&M (Statistics)Xiaozhu Zhang – University of Washington (Statistics)Haoyu Jiang – University of Illinois – Urbana Champlain (Statistics) Row 2 TJ Tang - Penn State (… read more about Nine MSS Students Accepted into Ph.D. Programs »
Duke Chapel is one of the most iconic structures on Duke’s campus and in Durham. It also offers a magnificent gathering space for significant events in the life of the university and its members. It was designed by Julian Abele, one of the first prominent African American architects, and the namesake of Abele Quad. It’s home to beautiful stained glass, and 50 bells that you can hear played every weekday at 5 pm. Did you know that Duke students, faculty, and staff can also climb to the top of Duke Chapel? MSS students… read more about MSS Climbs Duke Chapel Tower! »
Estimating the Brain’s Inherent Age From Sleep-Based EEG Scans by Srikar Katta, Harsh Parikh, Alex Volfovsky, Cynthia Rudin, Haoqi Sun, Brandon Westover wins at Hackathon read more about Almost Matching Exactly Lab wins Saving Lives With AI Hackathon »
Professor Fan Li has been appointed as the editor for social science, biostatistics, and policy in the Journal of the Annals of Applied Statistics, starting in March 2023. read more about Fan Li, New Editor for Social Science, Biostatistics and Policy »
The MSS program celebrated the return of our annual in-person alumni dinner at the JB Duke on February 17th. The event, hosted by the MSS GCC, featured keynotre speaker Eduardo Coronado Sroka (MS ’20) who shared his experience and insightful advice, and an alumni panel sharing experiences from across multiple industries and fields, including McKinsey & Co., Disney, and the New York Yankees. Program Dirctor, Dr. Funda Gunes, and faculty member Dr. Fan Li also shared remarks in support of the MSS program, and current… read more about Annual MSS Alumni Dinner Returns in 2023 »
Jerry Sacks, Professor Emeritus of Statistical Science, passed away in early 2023. Jerry was a leader of the statistics profession whose impact on the research community and national research infrastructure has had a broad and sustained impact. Jerry joined the Duke faculty in 1992 while serving as the founding Director of the National Institute of Statistical Sciences and moved full-time to Duke in 2001. Jerry was an active and valued colleague long past his retirement from Duke and his move to Emeritus status in… read more about Remembering Jerry Sacks »
Thank you to Zachary Abzug of Vectra AI and Dan Salo of Proofpoint for the outstanding seminar on cloud computing in machine learning production at Duke Statistical Science that kicked off this semester’s Proseminar series. Your comprehensive discussion and demonstrations on the role of cloud platforms were insightful and greatly appreciated by all attendees, including undergraduates, Master's, and Ph.D. students. An additional shoutout to Richard Zink of Lexitas Pharma Services for his incredible presentation at Duke,… read more about Spring 2023 Proseminar Series Kicks Off! »
Yuansi Chen, assistant professor of Statistical Science, and Kevin Welsher, associate professor of Chemistry, have been named Sloan Research Fellows for 2023. Awarded annually since 1955, Sloan Research Fellowships are one of the most prestigious awards available to U.S. and Canadian researchers. Yuansi Chen Chen’s research focuses on sampling algorithms – procedures that allow us to draw samples out of a distribution or population. They give us a glimpse into the unknown, whether the unknown is… read more about Two Trinity Faculty Named 2023 Sloan Research Fellows »
Yuansi Chen, Assistant Professor of Statistical Science at Duke University, has been awarded a prestigious National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award. The award supports outstanding young faculty members in their efforts to build a successful research enterprise. For the next five years, the NSF CAREER award will support Chen's work on the analysis of Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling algorithms that arise in high dimensional Bayesian statistical inference problems. Drawing samples… read more about Yuansi Chen awarded NSF CAREER grant »
Four Duke Statistical Science graduate students were among the winners of the American Statistical Association’s Student Paper Competition. By winning the competition, these students will receive travel awards to attend the upcoming 2023 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Elizabeth (Betsy) Bersson Bersson, a Ph.D. student advised by Professor Peter Hoff, won in the Social Statistics (SSS), Government Statistics (GSS), and Survey Research Methods (SRMS) section for… read more about StatSci Students Recognized for Research Articles »
The Statistical Science department at Duke celebrated the Lunar New Year in style with a delicious feast, which brought together StatSci undergrads, Masters students, Ph.D. candidates, and faculty for a festive start to the Year of the Rabbit. Thanks to everyone who organized and participated, especially Dr. Li Ma, Dr. Jason Xu, and Lori Rauch. Cheers to good luck, prosperity, and happiness in the coming year! read more about Happy Lunar New Year from Duke Statistical Science! »
StatSci Professor Jerry Reiter has been awarded the prestigious 2022 Links Lecture Award and will present his lecture later this month. Reiter's talk, "Protecting Privacy in a Blended Data World," will be delivered Tuesday, Jan. 24 at noon. To listen to this free, virtual lecture, you need to pre-register via this link, after which you will receive a confirmation, invitation email from Zoom. Reiter will discuss integration of data from multiple sources, often known as data blending, which is a core… read more about Jerry Reiter Receives ASA's Links Lecture Award »
Senior Statistical Science major Jenny Huang has won a $50,000 Quad Fellowship to pursue her doctoral studies in the United States next year. Named one of the 100 Quad Fellows in the inaugural group, Jenny will be part of a network for scholars from the United States, Japan, India, and Australia, designed to strengthen ties and shared STEM expertise between the four countries. Jenny's other major is Computer Science and she has a minor in math. She was selected last year as a 2022 Faculty Scholar. Congratulations, Jenny! read more about Senior Jenny Huang of Statistical Science to receive new Quad Fellowship for doctoral study »
The Department of Statistical Science congratulates our three December MSS graduates: Ying Xin, Tiancheng Pan, and Haoming Yang! Portfolio Research Topics: Ying Xin – "Image Classification on Avengers Faces Dataset” Tiancheng Pan – “Reinforcement Learning on Classification to Scheduling Patients” Haoming Yang – Interpretable AI for Relating Brain Structural and Function Connections. Ying and Tiancheng are pursuing careers in private industry and Haoming will be joining the ECE Ph.D. program here at… read more about Congratulations to our December MSS Graduates! »
One Duke alumna and a Duke senior have been named in the inaugural class of Quad Fellows, a new scholarship that provides funding for graduate research in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). This scholarship is supported by the governments of the United States, India, Australia, and Japan. Alumna Raahina Malik, and current senior Jenny Huang will be a part of a cohort of 100 masters and doctoral STEM students studying in the United States. The fellowship develops a network of science and technology… read more about Alumna, Senior Selected for New Quad Fellowship in STEM Fields »
StatSci Assistant Professor Alexander Fisher has been recognized with a Publisher’s Award for Excellence in Systematic Research for a paper he had published in “Systematic Biology” as a graduate student. Announced last month, the annual award is presented to the two best papers based on student research published in the journal during the previous year. The lead author must have been a student at the time the research was conducted. Fisher’s paper, “Relaxed Random Walks at Scale,” was among the more than 400 submissions… read more about Fisher Receives Publisher's Award for Excellence in Systematic Research »
DURHAM, N.C. -- “How many fingers am I holding up?” For vision-sensing brain cells in a monkey’s visual cortex, that answer depends on whether the digits are next to each other or partially overlapping. A new study from Duke University finds that single neurons conveying visual information about two separate objects in sight do so by alternating signals about one or the other. When two objects overlap, however, the brain cells detect them as a single entity. The new report is out Nov. 28 in the journal eLife. The… read more about Brain Cells Use A Telephone Trick To Report What They See »
Ph.D. student Xiaojun Zheng (with advisor Assistant Professor Simon Mak) received the Best Student Paper Award at the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) Annual Meeting. Their paper, “PERCEPT: a new online change-point detection method using topological data analysis”, proposes a new topology-aware online change detection approach for monitoring high-dimensional data streams, with applications to solar flare detection and human gesture monitoring. This award recognized outstanding papers… read more about Xiaojun Zheng Received Best Student Paper Award »