Each semester, the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science invites speakers who are doing exciting research in their fields to present seminars for our weekly colloquium series.

Past Invited Speakers

2026-2027

Reetam Majumder, Assistant Professor of Statistics, Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Arkansas. "Bayesian inference for bivariate extremes using semi-parametric representations of limit sets," September 17, 2026.

Priyam Das, Assistant Professor, Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Virginia Commonwealth University. "Bayesian Univariate-Guided Sparse Regression for Ultra-High-Dimensional Data," September 10, 2026.

Patrick Breheny, Professor, Department of Biostatistics, College of Public Health, University of Iowa. "A New Perspective on High-Dimensional Intervals," September 3, 2026.

Sameer Deshpande, Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics, University of Wisconsin-Madison. "Bayesian Additive Regression Trees for Varying Coefficient Models," August 27, 2026.

2025-2026

Yuexi Wang, Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. "Simulation-based Inference via Structured Score Matching," April 23, 2026.

Daniel Sewell, Professor of Biostatistics, College of Public Health, University of Iowa. "Relational Priors," April 16, 2026.

Shuoyang Wang, Assistant Professor, Department of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics, School of Public Health and Information Sciences, University of Louisville. "Deep Learning for Complex Functional Data Analysis," April 9, 2026.

Andee Kaplan, Associate Professor, Department of Statistics, Colorado State University. "Record Linkage for Streaming Data," April 2, 2026.

Muchao Ye, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Iowa. "Exploring the Adversarial Robustness of Language Models," March 26, 2026.

Ting-Hung Yu, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Iowa. "Transfer Learning for High-Dimensional Linear Stochastic Regression," March 12, 2026.

Heike Hofmann, Professor, Department of Statistics, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "A Statistical Approach to the Same Source Problem in the Evaluation of Firearms Evidence," March 10, 2026.

Kyle Schindl, Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics, Iowa State University. "Distributional Discontinuity Design," March 5, 2026.

Qiuqi Wang, Assistant Professor, Maurice R. Greenberg School of Risk Science, Georgia State University. "Standard and comparative e-backtests for general risk measures," February 26, 2026.

Srijan Sengupta, Associate Professor, Department of Statistics, North Carolina State University. "Finding Anomalous Cliques in Inhomogeneous Networks using Egonets," February 19, 2026.

Lynn Lin, Associate Professor of Biostatistics & Bioinformatics, Duke University. "Learning from Multi-Resolution Biomedical Data," February 12, 2026.

Bryon Aragam, Associate Professor of Econometrics and Statistics and Robert H. Topel Faculty Scholar, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago. "From Storytelling to Simulation: Statistical Foundations of Causal AI," February 5, 2026.

Max Sampson, Postdoctoral Research Scholar, Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Iowa. "Using Highest Conditional Density Sets to Construct Sequential Conformal Prediction Regions with Time-series Data," January 22, 2026.

Nan Lin, Professor of Statistics and Data Science, and Professor of Biostatistics (School of Medicine), Washington University in St. Louis. "Navigating Big Data with Quantile Regression: Distributed and Online Methodologies," December 11, 2025.

Vytaras Brazauskas, Faculty Candidate for the Goebel Endowed Chair in Actuarial Science, and Professor and Associate Chair for Actuarial Science, Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. "Smoothing and Measuring Discrete Risks on Finite and Infinite Domains," November 20, 2025.

Guojun Gan, Faculty Candidate for the Goebel Endowed Chair in Actuarial Science, and Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics, University of Connecticut. "Using Large Language Models to Generate New Features from Text Data for Loss Prediction," November 13, 2025.

Stephen Berg, Assistant Professor of Statistics, Penn State University. "Statistical properties of initial sequence type variance estimators for reversible Markov chains," November 7, 2025.

Mario Ghossoub, Faculty Candidate for the Goebel Endowed Chair in Actuarial Science, and Associate Professor of Actuarial Science and Sun Life Fellow in International Actuarial Science, University of Waterloo. "Foundations for Pareto-Optimal Peer-to-Peer Risk Sharing," November 6, 2025.

Ryan Peterson, Associate Professor of Internal Medicine-Infectious Diseases, Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa. "Glass-Box Models," October 30, 2025.

Tianxi Li, Associate Professor, and Director, Institute for Research in Statistics and its Applications (IRSA), School of Statistics, University of Minnesota Twin Cities. "Graph Release with Assured Node Differential Privacy," October 23, 2025.

Indranil Mukhopadhyay, Professor, Department of Statistics, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "From Data to Insight: Statistical Modeling of Single-Cell RNA-seq Data and Testing Differentially Expressed Genes," October 16, 2025.

Xinwei Shen, Dorothy Gilford Early Career Endowed Professor in Mathematical Statistics, University of Washington. "Generalization Beyond Data: A Distributional Perspective," October 9, 2025.

Ning (Patricia) Ning, Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics, Texas A&M University. "Metropolis-adjusted Subdifferential Langevin Algorithm," September 25, 2026.

Yuan Liao, Tippie Children Professor in Economics, Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa. "Does Noise Hurt Economic Forecasts?" September 11, 2026.

2024-2025

Rafal Kulik, Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Ottawa. "Extremes for non-stationary time series," May 1, 2025.

Veronica Berrocal, Professor, Department of Statistics, University of California, Irvine. "Using Bayesian nonparametric ideas and spatial statistics for Earth Sciences applications," April 17, 2025.

Martin Grace, Clement T. and Sylvia Hanson Family Chair, Faculty Director, Vaughan Institute, and Professor of Finance, Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa. "Vicarious Learning Networks - Evidence from Insurance Price Filings," April 10, 2025.

Will Kleiber, Professor, Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Colorado. "Some Statistical Problems in the Geosciences," March 27, 2025.

Chunlin Li, Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics, Iowa State University. "Uncovering hidden causality from noisy complex data," March 13, 2025.

Mena Whalen, Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Loyola University Chicago. "Multivariate Change Point Detection: Applications in Historical Baseball Data and Methodological Advancements with Weighted Multivariate Change Points," March 6, 2025.

Jae-Kwang Kim, Professor, Department of Statistics, Iowa State University. "Debiased calibration estimation using generalized entropy under selection bias," February 27, 2025.

Abhi Datta, Associate Professor, Department of Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "Machine learning for geospatial data with explicit modeling of spatial correlations," February 20, 2025.

Hao Chen, Associate Professor, Department of Statistics, University of California, Davis. "Change-point detection for modern complex data," February 13, 2025.

Ranjan Maitra, Professor, Department of Statistics, Iowa State University. "Fourier tensor-variate distributions for modeling nonstationarity in high-resolution imaging and other applications," December 5, 2024.

Shu Yang, Associate Professor of Statistics, University Faculty Scholar, Department of Statistics, North Carolina State University. "Enhancing Statistical Validity and Power in Hybrid Controlled Trials: A Randomization Inference Approach with Conformal Selective Borrowing," November 21, 2024.

Aixin Tan, Associate Professor, Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Iowa. "CONTRA: Conformal Prediction Region via Normalizing Flow Transformation," November 14, 2024.

Nan Zhu, Associate Professor of Risk Management, Smeal College of Business, The Pennsylvania State University. "Mortality Risks, Survival Pessimism, and Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study," November 7, 2024.

Dan Zhu, Professor, Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics, Monash University. "A Constrained Dynamic Nelson-Siegel Model for Monetary Policy Analysis," October 17, 2024.

Whitney Huang, Assistant Professor, School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, Clemson University. "Conditional Decomposition Approach for Modeling Multivariate Extreme Events," October 10, 2024.

Xueheng Shi, Assistant Professor, Departments of Statistics and Biological Systems Engineering, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "Recent Advancements in Changepoint Analysis," September 26, 2024.

Mengxiao Zhang, Assistant Professor, Department of Business Analytics, Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa. "Robust and Adaptive Algorithm Design in Online Learning," September 19, 2024.

Hyunkeun (Ryan) Cho, Associate Professor, Department of Biostatistics, University of Iowa. "Longitudinal causal modeling: Exploring treatment initiation timing and its effects on outcomes," September 5, 2024.

2023-2024

Yulia Gel, Professor, Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas. “Topological Clustering of Multilayer Networks,” May 2, 2024.

Qiuyun Zhu, PhD, Faculty Candidate for Assistant Professor in Statistics; Faragher Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Statistics, University of Minnesota. “A Statistical Perspective on Algorithm Unrolling Models for Inverse Problems,” April 30, 2024.

Kang Zhao, Professor, Henry B. Tippie Research Fellow, Department of Business Analytics, University of Iowa. “Hierarchy2vec — Representation Learning for the Prediction of Hierarchical Teams’ Performance,” April 25, 2024.

Won Chang, Associate Professor, Division of Statistics and Data Science, Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Cincinnati. “Fast Computer Model Calibration using Annealed and Transformed Variational Inference,” April 4, 2024.

Bin Zou, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics, University of Connecticut. “Strategic Underreporting and Optimal Deductible Insurance,” March 28, 2024.

Pulong Ma, Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics, Iowa State University. “Residual Treed Gaussian Processes,” March 21, 2024.

Chao Wang, Assistant Professor, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Iowa. “Statistical Transfer Learning for Modeling, Monitoring, and Prognosis,”  March 7, 2024.

Kshitij Khare, Professor, Department of Statistics, University of Florida. “Scalable and non-iterative graphical model estimation,” February 29, 2024.

Tao Wang, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of Victoria. “Distributed Learning for Kernel Mode-Based Regression,” February 22, 2024.

Likun Zhang, Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics, University of Missouri-Columbia. “Spatial scale-aware tail dependence modeling for high-dimensional spatial extremes,” February 15, 2024.

Buddhika W. Nettasinghe, Assistant Professor, Department of Business Analytics, Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa. “Extending Conformal Prediction to Hidden Markov Models with Exact Validity,” February 8, 2024.

Qiuyun Zhu, Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Statistics, University of Minnesota. “Minimax quasi-Bayesian estimation in sparse canonical correlation analysis via a Rayleigh quotient function,” February 1, 2024.

Andrew Thomas, Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Iowa. “Bayesian changepoint detection via logistic regression and the topological analysis of image series,” January 25, 2024.

Isabel Darcy, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics, University of Iowa.  “Topological data visualization with mapper,” December 7, 2023.

Xinyu Zhang, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Iowa. “Change Point Detection with Matrix-Variate Data: Leveraging and Adapting to Structured Mean Changes,” November 30, 2023.

Natalia Nolde, Professor, Department of Statistics, University of British Columbia. “Tail risk in the tail: Estimating high quantiles when a related variable is extreme,” November 16, 2023.

Jessi Cisewski-Kehe, Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics, University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Uncovering Hidden Worlds: Detecting Another Earth Amidst Stellar Variability,” November 9, 2023.

Chenglong Ye, Assistant Professor, Dr. Bing Zhang Department of Statistics, University of Kentucky. “Meta Clustering for Collaborative Learning,” November 2, 2023.

Joseph Antonelli, Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics, University of Florida. “A spatial interference approach to account for mobility in air pollution studies,” October 26, 2023.

Yichao Wu, TransUnion Professor, Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago. “Partially-Global Fréchet Regression,” October 5, 2023.

Forrest Crawford, Associate Professor of Biostatistics, Statistics & Data Science, Operations, and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Yale University. “COVID-19 transmission models in the real world: models, data, and policy,” September 21, 2023.

Daniel Sewell, Associate Professor, Department of Biostatistics, University of Iowa. “Agglomerative and divisive hierarchical Bayesian clustering,” September 14, 2023.

Dale Zimmerman, Professor, Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Iowa. “In Defense of (Unrestricted) Spatial Regression,” September 7, 2023.

2022-2023

Wen Zhou, Associate Professor, Department of Statistics, Colorado State University. “High dimensional clustering via latent semiparametric mixture models,” May 4, 2023.

Jingshen Wang, Assistant Professor of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley. “Adaptive Experiments Toward Learning Treatment Effect Heterogeneity,” April 20, 2023.

Emily Hector, Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics, North Carolina State University. “Functional Regression with Wearable Device Data: A New Lens through Data Partitioning,” April 13, 2023.

Yunzhang Zhu, Associate Professor, Department of Statistics, Ohio State University. “Model Complexity and Prediction Error in Modern Predictive Settings,” April 6, 2023.

Yinqiu He, Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics, University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Semiparametric Modeling and Analysis for Longitudinal Network Data,” March 30, 2023.

Guanyang Wang, Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics, Rutgers University, New Brunswick. “Unbiased Multilevel Monte Carlo methods for intractable distributions: MLMC meets MCMC,” March 23, 2023.

Alicia Carriquiry, Distinguished Professor and President's Chair, Department of Statistics, and Director of the Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence, Iowa State University. “On the validity of forensic pattern comparison disciplines,” March 2, 2023.

Emily Roberts, Assistant Professor, Department of Biostatistics, University of Iowa. “Causal Inference and Surrogate Endpoint Validation Using Principal Stratification Methods,” February 9, 2023.

Mary Salvaña, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Mathematics, University of Houston. “3D Bivariate Spatial Modelling of Argo Ocean Temperature and Salinity Profiles,” December 12, 2022.

Oh-Ran Kwon, PhD Candidate, School of Statistics, University of Minnesota. “Multivariate Regression via the Enhanced Response Envelope: Envelope Regularization and Double Descent,” December 9, 2022.

Nathan Wikle, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Statistics and Data Science, University of Texas at Austin. “Causal inference for environmental health data: Estimating causal effects in the presence of spatial interference,” December 6, 2022.

Andrew Thomas, Postdoctoral Associate, Center for Applied Mathematics & Department of Statistics and Data Science, Cornell University. “Detection and hypothesis testing for extremely noisy nanoparticle videos using topological data analysis,” December 2, 2022.

Beste Basciftci, Assistant Professor, Department of Business Analytics, Tippie College of Business, University of Iowa. “Decision Making under Uncertainty: Data-Driven Optimization Perspectives,” December 1, 2022.

David Hunter, Professor, Department of Statistics, Penn State University. “Model-Based Clustering: Some Old Ideas, Some New Ideas, and Why It's Not Necessarily Bad to Have Your Work Declared Unconstitutional,” November 17, 2022.

Zhao Ren, Assistant Professor of Statistics, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pittsburgh. “Heteroskedastic Sparse PCA in High Dimensions,” November 10, 2022.

Guanyu Hu, Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics, University of Missouri-Columbia. “Spatial Homogeneity Learning via Nonparametric Bayesian Method,” November 3, 2022.

Hao Helen Zhang, Professor and Chair, Statistics and Data Science Graduate Interdisciplinary Program; Professor, Mathematics; Professor, Applied Mathematics GIDP, University of Arizona. “Scalable and Model-free Methods for Multiclass Probability Estimation,” October 27, 2022.

Bijaya Adhikari, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Iowa. “Spectral Optimization on Dynamic Networks for Diffusion Analysis,” October 13, 2022.

Cynthia Rudin, Professor of Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Statistical Science, Mathematics, and Biostatistics & Bioinformatics; PI, Interpretable Machine Learning Lab, Duke University. “Do Simpler Machine Learning Models Exist and How Can We Find Them?” September 22, 2022.

Min Yang, Professor of Statistics, Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science, University of Illinois-Chicago. “Information-Based Optimal Subdata Selection for Massive and Heterogeneous Data,” September 15, 2022.

Runze Li, Eberly Family Chair Professor, Department of Statistics, Penn State University. “Model-Free Conditional Feature Screening with FDR Control,” September 8, 2022.