People

PhD Students | BS and MS Students | Other Student Collaborators

PhD Students

  • Fanghua Chen, PhD candidate in Statistics, 2028 (expected), University of South Carolina (co-advising with Ting Fung Ma)
    Dissertation topic: deep learning theory and methods for dependent and complex data

  • Sijian Fan, PhD in Statistics, 2026, University of South Carolina
    Dissertation title: Statistical Learning for Binary Data with Applications in Bioinformatics
    First position: Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University

  • Zile Zhao, PhD in Statistics, 2025, University of South Carolina
    Dissertation title: Methods and Applications for Bayesian Semiparametric Survival Analysis
    First position: Postdoctoral Fellow, Moffitt Cancer Center

  • Shijie Wang, PhD in Statistics, 2024, University of South Carolina
    Dissertation title: New Deep Learning Approaches to Classical Statistical Problems
    First position: Applied Scientist, Gauss Labs
    Winner of James D. Lynch Graduate Student Research Award

Undergraduate and Masters Students

  • Leah Wood, Honors Thesis student, BS in Statistics, 2025, University of South Carolina
    Honors Thesis: Spatiotemporal Modeling of Maternal Mortality in South Carolina, 2018–2023
    First position: Masters student in Biostatistics, Duke University

  • Emily Sitnik, Summer REU student, BS in Mathematics and Statistics, 2026 (expected), University of South Carolina
    Research project: Bayesian spatial modeling for disease mapping and causal inference

  • Mark Ritchie, Summer REU student, BS in Mathematics, 2026, University of South Carolina
    Research project: Bayesian spatial modeling for disease mapping and causal inference

  • Evan Funderburg, Summer REU student, BS candidate in Computer Science and Data Science, 2027 (expected), University of South Carolina
    Research project: Bayesian spatial modeling for disease mapping and causal inference

Other Student Collaborators*

(* I am/was not the primary supervisor of these students)

  • Peter Olejua, PhD candidate in Biostatistics, 2027 (expected), University of South Carolina
    Research project: variational inference for Bayesian high-dimensional regression

  • Liyan Xiong, PhD candidate in Biostatistics, 2027 (expected), University of South Carolina
    Research project: statistical methods for computational drug repositioning

  • Dayuan Wang, PhD candidate in Biostatistics, 2027 (expected), University of Florida
    Research project: statistical methods for computational drug repositioning

  • Xin Zhi, PhD in Statistics, 2025, University of South Carolina
    Research project: Bayesian additive regression trees (BART) for survival analysis
    First position: Senior Scientist, Merck

  • Qingyang Liu, PhD in Statistics, 2023, University of South Carolina
    Research project: new approaches to modal regression and Gaussian process regression
    First position: Postdoctoral Fellow in Statistics, Texas A&M University

  • Anja Zgodic, PhD in Biostatistics, 2023, University of South Carolina
    Research project: scalable Bayesian methodology for high-dimensional regression models
    First position: Research Data Scientist, Lubrizol
    Winner of ENAR Distinguished Student Paper Award

  • Hung-Tien Huang, BS in Computer Science, 2023, University of South Carolina
    Research project: explainable reinforcement learning with deep generative models
    First position: PhD student in Computer Science, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill