Julia Palacios appointed Assistant Professor of Statistics

Julia A. Palacios comes to Stanford from joint postdoctoral research at Harvard University and Brown University. She completed her PhD in Statistics at the University of Washington in 2013. Her dissertation research focused on methodological development of Bayesian nonparametric inference of evolutionary parameters from DNA sequence data from a single nonrecombining locus; this research resulted in manuscripts published in Biometrics, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society and Proceedings from the 28th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence.

Julia’s postdoctoral work has involved developing formal probabilistic and statistical methods to infer evolutionary parameters from whole genomes; her most recent published work develops a Bayesian nonparametric method that infers population size trajectories from a sequence of local genealogies partially linked. Currently she is extending the methodology to infer population size trajectories from whole genomic sequences directly.

Julia also brings with her a continuing interest in teaching and mentoring students. She has experience teaching quantitative courses to quant and non-quant majors at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Recognizing the importance of good mentorship in the early stages of an academic career, she regards these activities as the most rewarding of her profession.

Julia’s appointment as Assistant Professor with the Statistics Department is joint with the Department of Biomedical Data Science in the School of Medicine and will begin in the Autumn Quarter of 2016.