New Stein Fellow Appointments

Rachel Wang and Lucy Xia joined the Department of Statistics as new Stein Fellows from September 1, 2015.

Rachel received her PhD in Statistics at UC Berkeley this past spring under the supervision of Haiyan Huang and Peter Bickel. Her primary research focuses on analyzing high-dimensional, large-scale genomic data using methods from statistics and applied probability. In particular, she has worked on developing statistical methods for inferring gene interactions to reconstruct gene networks and analyzing these methods from both theoretical and applied perspectives. She plans to continue her research in statistical methodology development to solve problems in statistical genomics and extend their applications to other domains.

Lucy completed her PhD this past spring at the Princeton University Department of Operations Research and Financial Engineering under the supervision of Jianqing Fan and Philippe Rigollet. Her research interests lie in statistical inference and learning for big data, with applications to fields such as genetics and social networks. Computational difficulties can arise with contemporary big data sets, presenting challenges to the development of effective statistical methods. The general goal of her research is to develop applied methodologies from theoretical foundations that will profoundly influence the sciences and social sciences, as well as other fields.