About me

I am a (statistics) PhD student (with Tamara Broderick) in the EECS department at MIT affiliated with LIDS. I earned my MSc degrees in Statistics and Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2021. I did my undergraduate degree in Biology/Physics at Peking University.

My research is mostly motivated by applications in ecology and physics while focusing on how we plan, analyze and validate measurements and models designed for modern, complex data structure from emerging technologies while keeping connection to our established and emerging scientific (e.g. ecological, physical) understandings of the subject matter. On the statistics side I study Bayesian nonparametrics, variable selection, scalable (Bayesian) inverse problems and applied machine learning. On the ecology side I study population and community ecology mostly for carnivores. Unfortunately I am not able to mentor UROP students at the moment.

My research

Most recent statistics project:

• Active learning when features are hard to obtain, applications in genetics and astronomy;
• Distributional time series, Schrodinger bridges and SDEs, corresponding sampling strategies and applications in genetics and oceanography;
• Species and feature sampling problem with heterogeneity, multivariate (complete) random measures and application in genetics and sequencing strategies;
• Spike-and-Slab LASSO on multivariate regressions/chain graphs, its frequentist properties and experimental design;

Most recent ecology project:

• Population and spatial expansion of gray wolves (Canis lupus), theory of density dependence across spatial scales;
• Large scale capture-recapture and occupancy models for Osa peninsula jaguars.

More about me

I am a wildlife photographer and angler in my spare time. I hold a technician class amateur radio license, bearing KD9TZJ call sign. I am also an ACG fan.