Congratulations to Xinyu Zhang on winning the SBSS Student Paper Competition. The American Statistical Association’s Section on Bayesian Statistical Science focuses on encouraging researchers to learn more about Bayes' theorem as well as its real-life applications through many different sciences and disciplines. The SBSS Student Paper Competition highlights the completed research of students, undergraduate, master’s or Ph.D., ranging from applied to theoretical or computational work.  

Zhang’s research highlighted model misspecifications in Bayesian statistics, specifically comparing two primary methods, Bayesian restricted likelihood and generalized Bayes under both finite and infinite sample size. Zhang’s paper demonstrates the asymptotic equivalence between these two methods and gives a way to calibrate the posterior coverage based on this equivalence. Xinyu Zhang is a Statistics Ph.D. student at Ohio State and says that his research allowed him to further explore the beauty of statistics and how it applies to the real world. Zhang also stated that this award is very gratifying to him, noting the appreciation the Bayesian community has shown for his work in the field.  

The winners of the SBSS Student Paper Competition will receive partial support to attend the 2025 Joint Statistical Meetings in Tennessee. Recipients will also have an opportunity to present their research at JSM and receive a certificate following their presentations.  

Congratulations Xinyu!