Meta – Fall 2024

From the head

It's been far too long since we last connected with our alumni and friends through a newsletter. We hope this publication marks the beginning of a new tradition of annual updates about the exciting developments and achievements in our department. We look forward to the future together.

In this edition, I’m delighted to share highlights of the remarkable accomplishments, awards, grants, and activities achieved by our faculty and students over the past year. Their hard work and dedication continue to make us proud to represent such an outstanding department.

It was a pleasure to see many of you at the Joint Statistical Meetings alumni reception in Portland this summer. Reconnecting with familiar faces and meeting new alumni was truly rewarding. To help maintain our relationship with alumni, I’m especially excited to announce the launch of our new Alumni Mentoring Program. Thank you to everyone who has volunteered to support and guide our graduate students—your mentorship will leave a lasting impact. To learn more about the program and how to join, see the section below.

In addition, we’re thrilled to share that we are developing our first undergraduate major in Data Science. This program represents an exciting expansion for the department, and we eagerly anticipate the opportunities it will create for our students and community. We look forward to sharing more about this program in the future.

Finally, I’d also like to take a moment to express my deep gratitude to our former department heads, Dr. Lisa Ganio and Dr. Ginny Lesser who are retiring. Their leadership and dedication have made this department a vibrant and inspiring place to work and study.

Thank you all for your continued support and commitment to the department’s growth and success.

Lan Xue
Department Head, Statistics

Welcome new assistant professors!

Kollin W. Rott joins the Department of Statistics as an assistant professor. Originally from Illinois, Rott pursued his undergraduate studies in economics, finance and mathematics at the University of Alabama, where he also earned an MA in economics. He later completed Ph.D. in biostatistics at the University of Minnesota in 2024.

Surya Teja Eada joins the Department of Statistics as an assistant professor. Born in a small town in Andhra Pradesh, India, Eada’s early interest in mathematics was sparked by his parents, who ran an educational institution. He pursued his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in statistics at the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata. After working as a statistical analyst in a commercial bank, he moved to the United States to continue his studies. Eada completed his M.S. in applied financial mathematics and his Ph.D. in statistics at the University of Connecticut.

Learn more about our newest members

Faculty promotions

Kelsi Espinoza was promoted to Senior Instructor I

Thomas Sharpton was promoted to Professor of Statistics.

Grant funding

Congratulations to Professor and Co-director of Graduate studies Yanming Di and collaborators Dan Curry, Fuxin Li and Jing Zhou from the College of Agricultural Sciences and the College of Engineering. Di and his team received multiple grants from the Oregon Department of Agriculture and the Oregon Grass Seed Commissions to develop an automated grass seed analyzer.

Congratulations to Yanming Di as well as Lydia Newton for their NSF grant sponsored project aimed at developing and enhancing after-school activities for K-12 students in rural Oregon.

Faculty spotlights

Sharmodeep Bhattacharya was recently highlighted in IMPACT magazine for his work using statistics to examine electrocorticography data. By using rat brain activity, Bhattacharya is attempting to develop proper frameworks and methods for analyzing neural networks.

Katie McLaughlin and her team have long term goals to establish The Center for Pandemic Resilient Cities and use environmental monitoring and epidemic forecasting to diminish fast outbreaks of diseases.

This grad excels in everything remote

Check out how Mary Tunstall’s passion for environmental science led her to pursue a M.S. in Data Analytics. The opportunity to pursue a graduate degree online has allowed Mary to begin making a difference in some of Oregon’s resorts and parks.

AMP Statistics' first student

This fall marked the start of the new Accelerated Master’s Platform (AMP) in Statistics. The AMP program allows for undergraduate students to begin completing master’s coursework while completing their bachelor’s. The Department of Statistics is pleased to welcome our first AMP student, Matthew Taylor. Learn how Matthew got interested in statistics or read about AMP in The Source.

Alumni—Connect with statistics students through our new mentoring program!

For the 2024-25 academic year, we have introduced a new statistics alumni mentoring program. The Alumni Mentoring Program aims to pair current graduate students with statistics alumni. The alumni mentor will provide insights on how to succeed academically as well as how to perform well in the job market upon graduating. At the moment, we have 20 student-alumni pairs.

If you are interested in becoming an alumni mentor, please email [email protected] so we can connect you with a student.

The time commitment for the program is a single one hour zoom meeting per term.

Bringing statisticians to Corvallis

We are proud to continue our tradition of inviting faculty to OSU’s Corvallis campus to participate in the Department of Statistics’ Seminar series. This term we brought seven guest speakers from around the country. This term, our Department Head, Lan Xue has been responsible for organizing our weekly seminars and chosen the theme of inviting our faculty member’s old graduate advisors. This has been a fantastic way to learn about ongoing research in the field as well as learn more about our faculty’s academic backgrounds.

Some noteworthy past speakers are two of our own alumni; Dr. Faraz Niyaghi and Dr. Peter Boyd. Dr. Niyaghi is currently a lead Data Scientist in the IT Operations Research and Advanced Analytics team at American Airlines. He returned to OSU to provide practical insights and guidance drawn from his personal experience in job seeking and hiring processes. Dr. Boyd also shared his perspective on navigating one’s career by focusing on what statistical and computational skills are vital to succeeding in a data science career. He also spoke about his experience in consulting and the tech industry in his current role as a Senior Data Scientist and Consultant for New Light Technologies.

All of our seminar events are open to the public and available to join either in person or over zoom. To learn about our past seminars and sign up to receive information about our upcoming events go to our research webinars page and join the seminar listserv.