Welcome New Faculty and Students
08-15-2007
The Department of Statistics would like to welcome the new faculty and students to the department. Eight faculty members have joined the department this fall.
Ce-Ce Furtner joined the Department of Statistics as a Limited-Term Lecturer. Furtner received an M.S. in Statistics from the University of Central Florida. She has been an advisor in the College of Science for the last two years, working with undergraduate math and statistics majors. She is teaching STAT 301 this semester.
Jose Figueroa-Lopez joined the Department of Statistics as an Assistant Professor. He received his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2004. In 2006 he completed a two year Post-Doctorate in Mathematics from Purdue University and in 2007 he completed a one year Post-Doctorate in Statistics from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His primary research interests are:
- Quantitative and statistical methods for stochastic models and their application to mathematical finance, including nonparametric estimation, price modeling, stochastic control, portfolio optimization, valuation and hedging of contingent claims, and numerical methods.
- Emphasis on continuous-time incomplete models such as (time-changed) exponential
- Levy processes, jump-diffusion models, and stochastic volatility models.
- Limit theorems, construction, simulation, and estimation of stochastic processes
- Information and coding theory
- Concentration inequalities
This semester he will be teaching STAT 541, Advanced Probability and Options, with Numerical Methods.
Zhenqiang (James) Lu joined the Department of Statistics as a Visiting Assistant Professor. His research interests are Data Visualization, Healthcare Engineering, and Statistical Model Building.
Yuan (Alan) Qi joined the Department of Statistics as an Assistant Professor. He has a joint appointment with the Department of Computer Science. Qi received his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005. He has spent the last few years as a postdoctoral associate at MIT in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory researching computational biology and machine learning. He is interested in developing novel computational methods to model and understand biological systems. Specifically his interests include detecting protein-DNA binding events, identifying genes that affect organism development, deciphering regulatory programs at both transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels, and understanding the evolution of regulatory networks. He is also interested in developing statistical learning and inference methods as building blocks of generic intelligent systems for a wide range of applications. He will be teaching Computational Biology in the coming spring.
Tiantian Qin joined the Department of Statistics as a Visiting Assistant Professor. She received her Ph.D. in Management Information Systems in 2007 from the University of Arizona. Qin received her M.S. in Statistics from the University of South Carolina and B.S. in Statistics from the University of Science and Technology of China. Her research interests include Data Mining, Information Security, and Bioinformatics. She will be teaching STAT 503 this fall.
Mark Daniel Ward joined the Department of Statistics as an Assistant Professor. Ward received his Ph.D. in Mathematics with a Specialization in Computational Science from Purdue University in 2005. Before returning to Purdue, he was on the faculty in Mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania. His research lies in the area of analysis of data structures using analytic combinatorics and probabilistic methods. He is also interested in information theory and game theory. He will be teaching STAT 416 this fall.
Huiping Xu joined the Department of Statistics as a Visiting Assistant Professor. She received her Ph.D. in Statistics from Purdue University in 2007. Her research interests include estimation of accuracy of diagnostic tests, computational methods, and statistical modeling for healthcare data. She will be teaching STAT 503 this fall.
Hao Zhang joined the Department of Statistics as a Professor. He has a joint appointment with the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources. Zhang received his Ph.D. in Statistics from Michigan State University in 1995 and spent the last ten years at Washington State University where he interacted extensively with faculty in agricultural sciences. He firmly believes that statistical theory and applications mutually enrich each other. His recent research centers around statistical theory and modeling that are applicable to the analysis of massive data in agricultural and environmental sciences and health studies. One particular research area is in spatial statistics. He will be teaching STAT 695S, Modern Geospatial Statistics, this fall.
Nineteen new graduate students, including five Ph.D. students and fourteen M.S. students, entered the Department of Statistics graduate program. The new graduate students attended an orientation hosted by the Department on Sunday, August 12, 2007. The following week students attended several orientations and workshops at Purdue. Doug Crabill, Manager, Computer Systems, instructed a computer class on the computing facilities within the Department of Statistics and at Purdue University. Other activities during the past week included Vista Training, CETA/CIE Teaching Assistant Orientation, Micro Teaching Workshop, and STAT 225 and STAT 301 TA Training sessions. A reception in honor of the new students was held on Friday, Aug. 17, 2007 for all the Department of Statistics faculty, staff, and students.
Currently, the Department of Statistics has 55 faculty members, 19 full and part-time staff members, and 87 graduate students (56 Ph.D. students and 31 M.S. students).