Click on the year below to see a list of dissertation topics by student, along with placement information on where students accepted jobs.
2023
Kerstin Emily Frailey - “PRACTICAL DATA QUALITY FOR MODERN DATA & MODERN USES, WITH APPLICATIONS TO AMERICA’S COVID-19 DATA"

Dissertation Advisor: Martin Wells

Initial job placement: Co-Founder & CEO

David Kent - “Smoothness-Penalized Deconvolution: Rates of Convergence, Choice of Tuning Parameter, and Inference"

Dissertation Advisor: David Ruppert

Initial job placement: VISITING ASSISTANT PROFESSOR - Cornell University

Yuchen Xu - “Dynamic Atomic Column Detection in Transmission Electron Microscopy Videos via Ridge Estimation”

Dissertation Advisor: David Matteson

Initial job placement: Postdoctoral Fellow - UCLA

Siyi Deng - “Optimal and Safe Semi-supervised Estimation and Inference for High-dimensional Linear Regression"

Dissertation Advisor: Yang Ning

Initial job placement: Data Scientist - TikTok

2022
Peter (Haoxuan) Wu - “Advances in adaptive and deep Bayesian state-space models”

Dissertation Advisor: David Matteson

Initial job placement: Quantitative Researcher - DRW

Grace Deng - “Generative models and Bayesian spillover graphs for dynamic networks”

Dissertation Advisor: David Matteson

Initial job placement: Data Scientist - Research at Google

Samriddha Lahiry - “Some problems of asymptotic quantum statistical inference”

Dissertation Advisor: Michael Nussbaum

Initial job placement: Postdoctoral Fellow - Harvard University

Yaosheng Xu - “WWTA load-balancing for parallel-server systems with heterogeneous servers and multi-scale heavy traffic limits for generalized Jackson networks”

Dissertation Advisor: Jim Dai

Initial job placement: Applied Scientist - Amazon

Seth Strimas-Mackey - “Latent structure in linear prediction and corpora comparison”

Dissertation Advisor: Marten Wegkamp and Florentina Bunea

Initial job placement: Data Scientist at Google

Tao Zhang - “Topics in modern regression modeling”

Dissertation Advisor: David Ruppert and Kengo Kato

Initial job placement: Quantitative Researcher - Point72

 

2021
Wentian Huang - “Nonparametric and semiparametric approaches to functional data modeling”

Dissertation Advisor: David Ruppert

Initial job placement: Ernst & Young

Binh Tang - “Deep probabilistic models for sequential prediction”

Dissertation Advisor: David Matteson

Initial job placement: Amazon

Yi Su - “Off-policy evaluation and learning for interactive systems"

Dissertation Advisor: Thorsten Joachims

Initial job placement: Berkeley (postdoc)

Ruqi Zhang - “Scalable and reliable inference for probabilistic modeling”

Dissertation Advisor: Christopher De Sa

Initial job placement: Berkeley (postdoc)

Jason Sun - “Recent developments on Matrix Completion"

Dissertation Advisor: Martin Wells

Initial job placement: LinkedIn

Indrayudh Ghosal - “Model combinations and the Infinitesimal Jackknife : how to refine models with boosting and quantify uncertainty”

Dissertation Advisor: Giles Hooker

Initial job placement: Amazon

Benjamin Ryan Baer - “Contributions to fairness and transparency”

Dissertation Advisor: Martin Wells

Initial job placement: Rochester (postdoc)

Megan Lynne Gelsinger - “Spatial and temporal approaches to analyzing big data”

Dissertation Advisor: David Matteson and Joe Guinness

Initial job placement: Institute for Defense Analysis

Zhengze Zhou - “Statistical inference for machine learning : feature importance, uncertainty quantification and interpretation stability”

Dissertation Advisor: Giles Hooker

Initial job placement: Facebook

Huijie Feng - “Estimation and inference of high-dimensional individualized threshold with binary responses”

Dissertation Advisor: Yang Ning

Initial job placement: Microsoft

Xiaojie Mao - “Machine learning methods for data-driven decision making : contextual optimization, causal inference, and algorithmic fairness”

Dissertation Advisor: Nathan Kallus and Madeleine Udell

Initial job placement: Tsinghua University, China

Xin Bing - “Structured latent factor models : Identifiability, estimation, inference and prediction”

Dissertation Advisor: Marten Wegkamp and Florentina Bunea

Initial job placement: Cambridge (postdoc), University of Toronto

2020
Yang Liu - “Nonparametric regression and density estimation on a network"

Dissertation Advisor: David Ruppert and Peter Frazier

Initial job placement: Research Analyst - Cubist Systematic Strategies

Skyler Seto - “Learning from less : improving and understanding model selection in penalized machine learning problems”

Dissertation Advisor: Martin Wells

Initial job placement: Machine Learning Researcher - Apple

Jiekun Feng - “Markov chain, Markov decision process, and deep reinforcement learning with applications to hospital management and real-time ride-hailing”

Dissertation Advisor: Jim Dai

Initial job placement:

Wenyu Zhang - “Methods for change point detection in sequential data”

Dissertation Advisor: David Matteson

Initial job placement: Research Scientist - Institute for Infocomm Research

Liao Zhu - “The adaptive multi-factor model and the financial market"

Dissertation Advisor: Martin Wells

Initial job placement: Quantitative Researcher - Two Sigma

Xiaoyun Quan - “Latent Gaussian copula model for high dimensional mixed data, and its applications”

Dissertation Advisor: James Booth and Martin Wells

Initial job placement: Data Scientist at Google

2019
Praphruetpong (Ben) Athiwaratkun - "Density representations for words and hierarchical data"

Dissertation Advisor: Andrew Wilson

Initial job placement: AI Scientist - AWS AI Labs

Yiming Sun - “High dimensional data analysis with dependency and under limited memory”

Dissertation Advisor: Sumanta Basu and Madeleine Udell

Initial job placement: Applied Scientist - Amazon

Zi Ye - “Functional single index model and jensen effect"

Dissertation Advisor: Giles Hooker 

Initial job placement: Data & Applied Scientist - Microsoft

Hui Fen (Sarah) Tan - “Interpretable approaches to opening up black-box models”

Dissertation Advisor: Giles Hooker and Martin Wells

Initial job placement: Microsoft

Daniel E. Gilbert - “Luck, fairness and Bayesian tensor completion”

Dissertation Advisor: Martin Wells

Initial job placement: Applied Scientist - Amazon

Yichen Zhou - “Asymptotics and interpretability of decision trees and decision tree ensemblesg”

Dissertation Advisor: Giles Hooker

Initial job placement: Data Scientist - Google

 

2018
Ze Jin - “Measuring statistical dependence and its applications in machine learning”  

Dissertation Advisor: David Matteson

Initial job placement: Research Scientist, Facebook Integrity Ranking & ML - Facebook

Xiaohan Yan - “Statistical learning for structural patterns with trees”

Dissertation Advisor: Jacob Bien

Initial job placement: Senior Data Scientist - Microsoft

Guo Yu - “High-dimensional structured regression using convex optimization”

Dissertation Advisor: Jacob Bien

Initial job placement:

 

2017
Dan Kowal - "Bayesian Methods for Functional and Time Series Data"

Dissertation Advisor: David Matteson and David Ruppert

Initial job placement: assistant professor, Department of Statistics, Rice University

Keegan Kang - "Data Dependent Random Projections"

Dissertation Advisor: Giles Hooker

David Sinclair - "Model Selection Results for High Dimensional Graphical Models on Binary and Count Data with Applications to FMRI and Genomics"

Dissertation Advisor: Giles Hooker

2016
Liu, Yanning – "Statistical Issues in the Design and Analysis of Clinical Trials"

Dissertation Advisor: Bruce Turnbull

Nicholson, William Bertil – "Tools for Modeling Sparse Vector Autoregressions"

Dissertation Advisor: David Matteson

Tupper, Laura Lindley – "Topics in Classification and Clustering of High-Dimensional Data"

Dissertation Advisor: David Matteson

2015
Chetelat, Didier – "High-Dimensional Inference By Unbiased Risk Estimation"

Dissertation Advisor: Martin Wells

Initial Job Placement: Assistant Professor Universite de Montreal, Montreal, Canada

Gaynanova, Irina – "Estimation Of Sparse Low-Dimensional Linear Projections"

Dissertation Advisor: James Booth

Initial Job Placement: Assistant Professor, Texas A&M, College Station, TX

Mentch, Lucas – "Ensemble Trees and CLTS: Statistical Inference in Machine Learning"

Dissertation Advisor: Giles Hooker

Initial Job Placement: Assistant Professor, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA

Risk, Ben – "Topics in Independent Component Analysis, Likelihood Component Analysis, and Spatiotemporal Mixed Modeling"

Dissertation Advisors: David Matteson and David Ruppert

Initial Job Placement: Postdoctoral Fellow, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC

Zhao, Yue – "Contributions to the Statistical Inference for the Semiparametric Elliptical Copula Model"

Disseration Advisor: Marten Wegkamp 

Initial Job Placement: Postoctoral Fellow, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

 

2014
Chen, Maximillian Gene – "Dimension Reduction and Inferential Procedures for Images"

Dissertation Advisor: Martin Wells 

Initial Job Placement: Postdoctoral Fellow, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC

Earls, Cecelia – Bayesian hierarchical Gaussian process models for functional data analysis

Dissertation Advisor: Giles Hooker

Initial Job Placement: Lecturer, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

Li, James Yi-Wei – "Tensor (Multidimensional Array) Decomposition, Regression, and Software for Statistics and Machine Learning"

Dissertation Advisor: Martin Wells

Initial Job Placement: Research Scientist, Yahoo Labs

Schneider, Matthew John – "Three Papers on Time Series Forecasting and Data Privacy"

Dissertation Advisor: John Abowd

Initial Job Placement: Assistant Professor, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL

Thorbergsson, Leifur – "Experimental design for partially observed Markov decision processes"

Dissertation Advisor: Giles Hooker

Initial Job Placement: Data Scientist, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY

Wan, Muting – "Model-Based Classification with Applications to High-Dimensional Data in Bioinformatics"

Dissertation Advisor: James Booth

Initial Job Placement: Senior Associate, 1010 Data, New York, NY

2013
Johnson, Lynn Marie – "Topics in Linear Models: Methods for Clustered, Censored Data and Two-Stage Sampling Designs"

Dissertation Advisor: Robert Strawderman

Initial Job Placement: Statistical Consultant, Cornell, Statistical Consulting Unit, Ithaca, NY

Tecuapetla Gomez, Inder Rafael –  "Asymptotic Inference for Locally Stationary Processes"

Dissertation Advisor: Michael Nussbaum

Initial Job Placement: Postdoctoral Fellow, Georg-August-Universitat Gottigen, Gottigen, Germany. 

 

2012
Bar, Haim – "Parallel Testing, and Variable Selection -- a Mixture-Model Approach with Applications in Biostatistics" 

Dissertation Advisor: James Booth

Initial Job Placement: Postdoc, Department of Medicine, Weill Medical Center, New York, NY

Cunningham, Caitlin –  "Markov Methods for Identifying ChIP-seq Peaks" 

Dissertation Advisor: James Booth

Initial Job Placement: Assistant Professor, Le Moyne College, Syracuse, NY

Ji, Pengsheng – "Selected Topics in Nonparametric Testing and Variable Selection for High Dimensional Data" 

Dissertation Advisor: Michael Nussbaum 

Initial Job Placement: Assistant Professor, University of Georgia, Athens, GA

Morris, Darcy Steeg – "Methods for Multivariate Longitudinal Count and Duration Models with Applications in Economics" 

Dissertation Advisor: Francesca Molinari 

Initial Job Placement: Research Mathematical Statistician, Center for Statistical Research and Methodology, U.S. Census Bureau, Washington DC

Narayanan, Rajendran – "Shrinkage Estimation for Penalised Regression, Loss Estimation and Topics on Largest Eigenvalue Distributions" 

Dissertation Advisor: Martin Wells 

Initial Job Placement: Visiting Scientist, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India

Xiao, Luo – "Topics in Bivariate Spline Smoothing" 

Dissertation Advisor: David Ruppert 

Initial Job Placement: Postdoc, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD

Zeber, David – "Extremal Properties of Markov Chains and the Conditional Extreme Value Model" 

Dissertation Advisor: Sidney Resnick 

Initial Job Placement: Data Analyst, Mozilla, San Francisco, CA

2011
Clement, David – "Estimating equation methods for longitudinal and survival data" 

Dissertation Advisor: Robert Strawderman 

Initial Job Placement: Quantitative Analyst, Smartodds, London UK

Eilertson, Kirsten – "Estimation and inference of random effect models with applications to population genetics and proteomics" 

Dissertation Advisor: Carlos Bustamante 

Initial Job Placement: Biostatistician, The J. David Gladstone Institutes, San Francisco CA

Grabchak, Michael – "Tempered stable distributions: properties and extensions" 

Dissertation Advisor: Gennady Samorodnitsky 

Initial Job Placement: Assistant Professor, UNC Charlotte, Charlotte NC

Li, Yingxing – "Aspects of penalized splines" 

Dissertation Advisor: David Ruppert 

Initial Job Placement: Assistant Professor, The Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics, Xiamen University

Lopez Oliveros, Luis – "Modeling end-user behavior in data networks" 

Dissertation Advisor: Sidney Resnick 

Initial Job Placement: Consultant, Murex North America, New York NY

Ma, Xin – "Statistical Methods for Genome Variant Calling and Population Genetic Inference from Next-Generation Sequencing Data" 

Dissertation Advisor: Carlos Bustamante 

Initial Job Placement: Postdoc, Stanford University, Stanford CA

2010
Kormaksson, Matthias – "Dynamic path analysis and model based clustering of microarray data" 

Dissertation Advisor: James Booth 

Initial Job Placement: Postdoc, Department of Public Health, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York NY

Schifano, Elizabeth – "Topics in penalized estimation" 

Dissertation Advisor: Robert Strawderman 

Initial Job Placement: Postdoc, Department of Biostatistics, Harvard University, Boston MA

2009
Hanlon, Bret – "High-dimensional data analysis" 

Dissertation Advisor: Anand Vidyashankar 

Initial Job Placement: Postdoc, Department of Biostatistics, Harvard University, Boston MA

Shaby, Benjamin – "Tools for hard bayesian computations" 

Dissertation Advisor: David Ruppert 

Initial Job Placement: Postdoc, SAMSI, Durham NC

Zipunnikov, Vadim – "Topics on generalized linear mixed models" 

Dissertation Advisor: James Booth 

Initial Job Placement: Postdoc, Department of Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD

2008
Barger, Kathryn Jo-Anne – "Objective bayesian estimation for the number of classes in a population using Jeffreys and reference priors" 

Dissertation Advisor: John Bunge 

Initial Job Placement: Pfizer Incorporated

Chan, Serena Suewei – "Robust and efficient inference for linear mixed models using skew-normal distributions" 

Dissertation Advisor: Anand Vidyashankar 

Initial Job Placement: Statistician, Takeda Pharmaceuticles, Deerfield IL

Lin, Haizhi – "Distressed debt prices and recovery rate estimation" 

Dissertation Advisor: Martin Wells 

Initial Job Placement: Associate, Fixed Income Department, Credit Suisse Securities (USA), New York, NY