Each year, the statistics department welcomes a dynamic mix of new and returning faculty, students (BS, MS, and PhD), visiting scholars, and affiliates. “To foster new connections, we hosted the Fever Talks to introduce our department faculty to the students and broader George Mason University community,” said Department Chair Jiayang Sun. “These talks can spark collaboration within and beyond the first floor of the Nguyen Engineering Building, highlight the energy and innovation driving our program forward.”
During the two Friday seminar sessions, 73 percent of department faculty (both tenure-line and term faculty) presented five-minute Fever Talks to introduce themselves to new (and current) members of the George Mason University community. The talks showcased research interests/highlights from recent projects and collaborations, teaching philosophies, mentoring experience, and general information about themselves.
Research interests span artificial intelligence, clinical trials, experimental design, spatio-temporal modeling, imaging data analysis, time series, Bayesian methods, high-dimensional and complex data, robust statistics, simultaneous inference, data science foundation, and those interfacing Statistics and CS. Collaborative work extends across broad application areas, including ecology, meteorology, planetary science, medicine, bioengineering, biomedical research, education, public policy, data privacy, and others – after all, statistics is the science about data, which is a pillar for evidence-based research. One talk even turned into a trivia contest with prizes.
For students, the talks provided a valuable opportunity to learn more about faculty members—insights that may guide decisions about selecting advisors at the MS and PhD levels. For faculty, the series offered a chance to pause, reflect, gain a deeper appreciation of colleagues’ research, teaching interests, and hobbies, and foster new collaborations.
The following faculty presented at the Fever Talks: Jonathan Auerbach, Isuru Dassanayake, Adetokunbo Fadahunsi, David Kepplinger, Ben Lee, Kenneth Pasiah, Nicholas Rios, William Rosenberger (Distinguished University Professor), Ray Bai, Brenda Betancourt, Michael Holland, Ilhan Izmirli, Kenneth Strazzeri, John Stufken, Jiayang Sun (Bernard Dunn Eminent Scholar), Lily Wang.