The research team is currently focused on building rigorous statistical foundations for modern data science and AI, with particular emphasis on learning from heterogeneous, sensitive, and distributed data. Working with a group of collaborators, the team pursues research in transfer learning, differential privacy, federated and distributed learning, causal inference, and high-dimensional statistics.The overarching goal is to characterize fundamental limits and develop optimal, adaptive, and practically useful methodologies that operate effectively under privacy, communication, heterogeneity, and resource constraints. The team also actively applies these methods to domains such as genomics and financial econometrics.
Current members
Ph.D. Students
Past members
| Name | Role | Placement |
|---|---|---|
| Wenguang Sun | Ph.D. Student 2003-08 | Assistant Professor · Department of Statistics · North Carolina State University |
| Lie Wang | Ph.D. Student 2003-08 | Assistant Professor · Department of Mathematics · MIT |
| Weidong Liu | Postdoc 2009-11 | Professor · Dept of Math & Institute of Natural Sciences · Shanghai Jiao Tong University |
| Rossi Luo | Postdoc 2009-11 | Assistant Professor · Department of Biostatistics · Brown University |
| Jichun Xie | Ph.D. Student 2006-11 | Assistant Professor · Dept of Biostatistics & Bioinformatics · Duke University |
| Aditya Guntuboyina | Postdoc 2011 | Assistant Professor · Department of Statistics · University of California at Berkeley |
| Jessie Jeng | Postdoc 2009-12 | Assistant Professor · Department of Statistics · North Carolina State University |
| Yihong Wu | Postdoc 2011-12 | Assistant Professor · Dept of Electrical and Computer Engineering · University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign |
| Yin Xia | Ph.D. Student 2008-13 | Assistant Professor · Department of Statistics · University of North Carolina |
| Dave Zhao | Postdoc 2012-14 | Assistant Professor · Department of Statistics · University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign |
| Xiaodong Li | Postdoc 2013-15 | Assistant Professor · Department of Statistics · University of California at Davis |
| Anru Zhang | Ph.D. Student 2010-15 | Assistant Professor · Department of Statistics · University of Wisconsin-Madison |
| Hyunseung Kang | Ph.D. Student 2010-15 | Assistant Professor · Department of Statistics · University of Wisconsin at Madison |
| Wanjie Wang | Postdoc 2014-16 | Assistant Professor · Department of Statistics · National University of Singapore |
| Qinwen Wang | Postdoc 2015-16 | Assistant Professor · School of Data Science · Fudan University |
| Jing Ma | Postdoc 2015-17 | Biostatistician · Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center |
| Zijian Guo | Ph.D. Student 2012-17 | Assistant Professor · Department of Statistics · Rutgers University |
| Tengyuan Liang | Ph.D. Student 2012-17 | Assistant Professor · Booth School of Business · University of Chicago |
| Dongdong Xiang | Postdoc 2016-17 | Professor · School of Statistics · East China Normal University |
| Preetam Nandy | Postdoc 2017-18 | Software Engineer · Data Mining/Machine Learning · LinkIn |
| Linjun Zhang | Ph.D. Student 2014-19 | Assistant Professor · Department of Statistics · Rutgers University |
| Abhishek Chakrabortty | Postdoc 2016-19 | Assistant Professor · Department of Statistics · Texas A&M University |
| Shaokun Li | Ph.D. Student 2015-20 | Pearl River Group |
| Rong Ma | Ph.D. Student 2016-21 | Assistant Professor · Department of Biostatistics · Harvard University |
| Sai Li | Postdoc 2018-21 | Assistant Professor · Institute of Statistics and Big Data · Renmin University of China |
| Yichen Wang | Ph.D. Student 2016-22 | Amazon Research |
| Hongji Wei | Ph.D. Student 2017-22 | Two Sigma |
| Ruijia Wu | Ph.D. Student 2017-22 | Assistant Professor · Department of Business Intelligence · Antai College of Economics and Management · Shanghai Jiao Tong University |
| Ran Chen | Ph.D. Student 2017-22 | Postdoc · Department of EECS · MIT |
| Hongming Pu | Ph.D. Student 2018-22 | Citadel |
| Changxiao Cai | Postdoc 2021-23 | Assistant Professor · Dept of Industrial & Operations Engineering · University of Michigan |
| Arnab Auddy | Postdoc 2023-24 | Assistant Professor · Department of Statistics · Ohio State University |
| Abhinav Chakraborty | Ph.D. Student 2020-25 | Postdoc · Department of Statistics · Columbia University |
| Lasse Vuursteen | Postdoc 2023-25 | Assistant Professor · Department of Statistics · Duke University |