Alumni Notes
Jessi Bardill (Ph.D. English, 2011) has accepted a tenure-track position in Native American Literature at East Carolina University for fall 2013.
Anirban Bhattacharya (Ph.D. Statistical Science 2012) won the 2012 Savage “Theory & Methods” Award for his thesis on “Bayesian Shrinkage in High Dimensions” advised by David Dunson. This award is bestowed each year on the author of “a dissertation that makes important original contributions to the foundations, theoretical developments, and/or general methodology of Bayesian analysis.”
Leslie Brown (Ph.D. History PhD 1997) participated in the Race, Scholarship, and the Disciplines symposium held in the fall to honor 50 years of black students at Duke University. Brown is Associate Professor of History at Williams College.
Alexander Byrd (Ph.D. History 2001) participated in the Race, Scholarship, and the Disciplines symposium held in the fall to honor 50 years of black students at Duke University. Byrd is Associate Professor of History at Rice University.
Avishek Chakraborty (Ph.D. Statistical Science, 2010) won the 2012 Savage “Applied Methodology” Award for his thesis on “Modeling Point Patterns, Measurement Error and Abundance for Exploring Species Distributions” advised by Alan Gelfand. This award is bestowed each year on the author of “a dissertation that makes outstanding contributions with novel Bayesian analysis of a substantive problem that has potential to impact statistical practice in a field of application.”
Karen Cook (Ph.D. Music, 2012) has been appointed Associate in Music and Assistant Professor of Music History at The Hartt School at the University of Hartford, CT.
Erica Edwards (Ph.D. Literature 2006) participated in the Race, Scholarship, and the Disciplines symposium held in the fall to honor 50 years of black students at Duke University. Edwards is Associate Professor of English at the University of California-Riverside.
Erica Fretwell (Ph.D. English, 2011) has accepted a tenure-track position in Postbellum US Literature at the State University of New York – Albany for fall 2013.
Koonyong Kim (Ph.D. English, 2010) has accepted a tenure-track position in English at the University of San Diego for fall 2013.
Tovah Klein (Ph.D. Psychology & Neuroscience, 1989) is the author of the book, How Toddlers Thrive: What Parents Can Do Today To Plant the Seeds of Lifetime Success, which will be available in February, 2014 (Touchstone: 2014). Klein is the director of the Barnard Center for Toddler Development.
William Kronenberger (Ph.D. Psychology, 1991) was promoted to Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Indiana University School of Medicine, where he serves as Director of the Section of Psychology.
George Lam (Ph.D. Music, 2011) has joined the faculty this fall of York College, City University of New York as Assistant Professor of Music.
Yan Li (Ph.D. Psychology & Neuroscience, 2007) has been promoted to Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at DePaul University.
Melissa Libertus (Ph.D. 2010, Psychology & Neuroscience) has accepted a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Research Scientist at the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh.
Viridiana Lourdes (Ph.D. Statistical Science, 2000) was appointed to the position of Principal Software Engineer with AutoGrid Systems in Silicon Valley, where she is involved in “big data” energy analysis and forecasting. Viridiana, who previously worked at Aristarc Capital and Morgan Stanley, is an expert in Bayesian statistical modeling, forecasting, futures markets, and related areas.
Kathleen McClancy (Ph.D. English, 2009) has accepted a tenure-track position in Film and Media Studies and 20th C. American Literature at Texas State University – San Marcos for fall 2013.
Susan Paddock (Ph.D. Statistical Science, 1999), currently Senior Statistician and Head of Statistics at the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, California, was recognized as an American Statistical Association Fellow “for excellence in statistical consulting on public policy research, for integrating innovative statistical methodology with substantive problems of national healthcare policy, and for noteworthy service to the profession.”
Raquel Prado (Ph.D. Statistical Science, 1998), currently Professor of Statistics & Applied Mathematics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, was recognized as an American Statistical Association Fellow “for outstanding research in time series analysis, stochastic modeling and biomedical signal processing; for pioneering the development and deployment of multivariate models in biomedical applications and for service to the profession, especially in efforts to increase the participation of females and minorities in diverse areas of statistics.”
Tatiana Prytkova (Ph.D. Chemistry ’06) is well into her term as assistant professor at Chapman College following a post-doc at Northwestern.
Ashley L. Black Ramirez (Ph.D. Chemistry ’13) published a manuscript in Nature Chemistry on a mechanochemical method to strengthen synthetic polymers in response to shear forces.
Carl Schimmel (Ph.D. Music, 2008) has developed a new model to study audience preferences in concert ticket sales. His paper, co-written with Wagner Kamakura from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke, was published in the June 2013 issue of the International Journal of Research in Marketing. Schimmel is Assistant Professor of Theory and Composition at Illinois State University.
Nicole Waligora-Davis (Ph.D. English 2001) participated in the Race, Scholarship, and the Disciplines symposium held in the fall to honor 50 years of black students at Duke University. Waligora-Davis is Associate Professor of English at Rice University.
Gangqiang Xia (Ph.D. Statistical Science 2006) was promoted to head of the mortgage modeling group at Morgan Stanley, NYC. He directs research and modeling for asset-backed, residential mortgage-backed and commercial-backed securities in cash and synthetic markets, and also leads mortgage modeling for Morgan Stanley’s Global Capital Market and Global Wealth Management.
Dequan Xiao (Ph.D. Chemistry 2009) has joined the University of New Haven Department of Chemistry as an assistant professor.
Jessi Bardill (Ph.D. English, 2011) has accepted a tenure-track position in Native American Literature at East Carolina University for fall 2013. Anirban Bhattacharya (Ph.D. Statistical Science 2012) won the 2012 Savage “Theory & Methods” Award for his thesis on “Bayesian Shrinkage in High Dimensions” advised by David Dunson. This award is bestowed each year on […] pbess pakis.bessias@duke.edu sidebar =>
MAT Graduate Awarded STEM Teaching Fellowship
Katherine Unruhe (MAT ’12) has received a five-year 2013 Knowles Science Teaching Foundation Fellowship (KTSF). The KSTF Teaching Fellowships offer a comprehensive program of financial support and professional development for early-career STEM teachers, with the aim of improving STEM education in the nation by building a stable, sustainable corps of STEM teacher leaders. Katherine, along with the other 34 members of the 2013 cohort, is committed to teaching STEM subjects to high school students in the United States. Designed specifically to develop beginning teachers into teacher leaders, the Teaching Fellowships offer support and guidance as fellows embark on the credentialing process and their teaching careers. Katherine teaches physical science and earth science at Northern High School in Durham, N.C.
Statistics Alum Receives Young Investigator Award
Kate Calder (Ph.D. Statistical Science '03), currently Associate Professor of Statistics at The Ohio State University, recently received the Young Investigator Award of the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and the Environment. The award was announced and presented at the 2013 Joint Statistical meeting in Montreal, Canada, in August 2013. Kate won the award for her research over several years on "space-time modeling and novel computational methods for complex high-dimension models, with application to air pollution and human exposure modeling; for tailoring methods to meet the needs of environmental applications; and for serving as an important role model for young environmental statisticians."