
The 2023/24 academic year brought many opportunities for us to celebrate our graduates! We recently started a new tradition of holding a celebratory lunch where graduating graduate students and their families can gather along with some current department affiliates to share the joy of this momentous achievement. This year, JC Yannotty, Jackson Chapin, Kartik Lovekar, G. Dalton Hopper, Colleen Sunderland-Ober, Sibo Peng, Rui Qiang, Wei-En Lu and many of their loved ones joined us to celebrate together. Many were not able to join, though. All new graduate alumni who received degrees in 2024 are listed below.

We also celebrate those receiving bachelor’s degrees. For the spring commencement, Statistics and Data Analytics students and their families are invited to join us for warm beverages and donuts before they walk over to the ‘Shoe for the ceremony. Among those who received BS degrees in the 2023-24 academic year, 53 majored in Statistics and 46 in Data Analytics. An additional 26 received minors in Statistics. We look forward to hearing from these students as they grow in their chosen career paths!
Finally, we welcomed over 100 brand new undergraduate students who are now working hard toward Statistics and Data Analytics majors, and we expect many more will join this cohort as they decide that statistics or data analytics majors include interesting topics and provide exciting opportunities! At the graduate level, we welcomed 8 new students seeking a PhD in Statistics, 6 seeking degrees in Biostatistics, 2 seeking the MAS, and 7 seeking MS degrees in Statistics. We are excited to see how these students learn and grow and to find out how they will leave their mark on the department and the profession.
2023-24 Doctoral Degrees:
- Hyoin An, PhD Statistics; Advisor: Dr. Steven MacEachern; "Bayesian Quantile Regression via Dependent Quantile Pyramids"
- Qingyu Chen, PhD Biostatistics; Advisor: Dr. Shili Lin; “Association Test and Variable Selection in Microbiome Analysis with Phylogeny”
- G. Dalton Hopper, PhD Statistics; Advisor: Dr. Omer Ozturk; “Order Restricted Cluster Randomized Design (ORCRD)”
- Pashmeen Kaur, PhD Statistics; Advisor: Dr. Peter Craigmile; “Statistical Methods for Generalized Integer Autoregressive Processes”
- Lun Li, PhD Statistics; Advisor: Dr. Yoonkyung Lee; "A Quasi-Likelihood Approach to Latent Space Modeling for Compositional Data: Computation, Model Diagnostics, and Applications."
- Xin Liu, PhD Biostatistics; Advisor: Dr. Patrick Schnell; “Bayesian Data Augmentation for Recurrent Events under Intermittent Assessment in Overlapping Intervals”
- Kartik Lovekar, PhD Statistics; Advisor: Dr. Subhadeep Paul; “Resampling methods for network analysis”
- Wei-En Lu, PhD Biostatistics; Advisor: Dr. Ai Ni; “Causal Inference in Case-Cohort Studies Using Restricted Mean Survival Time”
- Rui Qiang, PhD Statistics; Advisor: Dr. Peter Craigmile; “Accounting for Preferential Sampling in Geostatistical Inference”
- Meijia Shao, PhD Statistics; Advisor: Dr. Yuan Zhang; “Parametric and Non-Parametric Methods for Statistical Network Inference”
- John Yannotty, PhD Statistics; Advisor: Dr. Matthew Pratola; “Bayesian Additive Regression Tree Methodology for Multi-Simulator Computer Experiments”
- Rui Zhang, PhD Statistics; Advisors: Dr. Oxana Chkrebtii, Dr. Dongbin Xiu; “Likelihood-free Inference via Deep Neural Networks”
- Ruochen Zhao, PhD Biostatistics; Advisor: Dr. Bo Lu; “Template Matching Methods for Causal Inference in Complex Observational Studies”
- Yuxi Zhu, PhD Biostatistics; Advisor: Dr. Lang Li; “Application of multistate transition models in electronic medical record data”
2023-24 Master’s Degrees:
- Stephen Strouse, MAS
- Zoe Ashton, MS
- Stephen Dignan, MS
- Xiguang Liu, MS
- Haotian Xie, MS
- Zehao Yan, MS
- Sarah Balfour, MAS
- Jackson Lowell Chapin, MAS
- Zherui Zheng, MAS
- Max Cartwright, MS
- Jiaxin Chen, MS
- Tianyi Chen, MS
- Eric Stephen Crislip, MS
- Nicholas Anthony Mandarano, MS
- Sibo Peng, MS
- Yumo Peng, MS
- Ruoyuan Qian, MS
- Sayoni Roychowdhury, MS
- Lingpeng Shan, MS
- Colleen Sunderland-Ober, MS
- Sijie Wu, MAS
- Andrew Olson Heeszel, MS
- Patrick Allen McHugh
As a sneak peek for next year, several of our graduate students received diplomas in autumn 2024:
- Seth Adarkwah Yiadom, MS
- Justice Ameyi, MS
- David Angeles, PhD Biostatistics; Advisor: Dr. Sebastian Kurtek
- Arkajyoti Bhattacharjee, MS
- Nathan Boone, MAS
- Ziyu Gao, MS
- Dongnyeong Heo, MS
- Nicole King, MAS
- Ruoqi Song, MS
- Xuerui Yang, MAS
- Qian Zhou, MS