Rice University’s Department of Statistics houses internationally recognized experts whose work spans infectious disease modeling, artificial intelligence and machine learning, climate and environmental analytics, quantitative finance, genomics, neuroimaging, applied probability and more. These faculty members are available to provide data-driven insight for news stories across science, health, technology, policy and society.
Arko Barman, associate teaching professor, D2K lab member
Expertise: AI for biomedicine, machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, medical image analysis, NLP, data mining and AI for space applications.
Great for reporters covering: AI in health care, AI for space applications, emerging classroom AI tools, responsible machine learning, medical imaging breakthroughs, AI workforce development and innovations in data-driven education.
Katherine B. Ensor, the Noah G. Harding Professor of Statistics and director of the Center for Computational Finance and Economic Systems
Expertise: General probability and statistics and data-informed decisions in the AI era; public health surveillance (including wastewater epidemiology); AI; environmental statistics; urban analytics; high-dimensional time series; machine learning; computational finance, insurance, sustainability and climate impact.
Great for reporters covering: Infectious disease forecasting, environment, environmental health, community resilience, urban data systems, financial analytics, extreme-event modeling and data-informed decisions in the AI era.
Meng Li, the Noah Harding Associate Professor of Statistics and associate chair
Expertise: Probabilistic image analysis, machine learning, variable selection, functional and tree-structured data, nonparametric Bayes, neuroscience and materials informatics.
Great for reporters covering: AI interpretability, advanced data modeling for science and industry, medical application, digital health, brain research, imaging technologies and materials discovery.
Christine Peterson, associate professor of statistics
Expertise: Biostatistics, microbiome data analysis, biological networks and Bayesian methods.
Great for reporters covering: Complex biological findings, research on the microbiome and cancer research stories.
Frederi Viens, professor of statistics
Expertise: Probability theory, stochastic processes, Bayesian statistics, quantitative finance, actuarial science, climate and agricultural modeling, development economics and nuclear physics.
Great for reporters covering: Climate risk, financial markets and insurance, agriculture and sustainability, uncertainty modeling, big-data science policy and global development.
Huixia Judy Wang, professor and chair of statistics and the William Marsh Rice Trustee Professor in Data Science
Expertise: Bioinformatics and biostatistics, quantile and semiparametric regression, conformal prediction, statistical learning, spatial analysis, extreme value theory, longitudinal and survival analysis, high-dimensional inference, change-point detection and missing-data analytics.
Great for reporters covering: Public health and biomedical studies, environmental extremes, big-data modeling, risk assessment and emerging statistical methods.
To arrange interviews, contact media relations specialist Alex Becker at alex.becker@rice.edu.