Rice University Statistics

10/16/2026

Join us for the Statistics Colloquium featuring Dr. Likun Zhang, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistics and Data Science at the University of Missouri, presenting “Integrating mechanistic dynamics to characterize the causes of extremes in environmental processes.”

Extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, heat domes, and wildfires frequently occur in spatial clusters that evolve over time. Dr. Zhang will discuss dynamic and causal approaches to spatiotemporal extremes, addressing the limitations of existing methods that rely on stringent assumptions and neglect the complex relationships among factors interacting across space and time, and will share perspectives on improving the practicality and effectiveness of these models.

📅 Monday, November 2, 2026
⏰ 4:00 PM
📍 Maxfield Hall Room 251, Rice University

https://events.rice.edu/statistics/event/439173-statistics-colloquium-likun-zhang-university-of

10/14/2026

What does privacy really mean in a world built on data?

That’s the question at the heart of the 2026 James R. Thompson Distinguished Lecture, featuring Dr. Xiao-Li Meng, Whipple V.N. Jones Professor of Statistics at Harvard University.

In “Privacy, Data Privacy, and Differential Privacy,” Dr. Meng will explore how our idea of privacy has evolved from a 19th-century legal right into one of the defining challenges of the digital age — and why safeguarding it takes more than the tools we often rely on.

📅 Thursday, November 5, 2026
⏰ 4:00 p.m. CST
📍 McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall | Reception to follow in Martel Hall
🔗 Register: https://statistics.rice.edu/news-events/james-r-thompson-distinguished-lecture-series

10/08/2026

🚀 Your Bridge to Industry: Rice University's Master of Statistics (MSTAT)

The MSTAT program prepares students for careers as professional statisticians, providing advanced training in statistics theory, methodology, and techniques beyond the typical undergraduate program.

Ideal for students with degrees in mathematical, physical, or engineering sciences seeking strong analytical skills for careers in business, industry, government, or other quantitative fields.

📅 Join our upcoming virtual information sessions:

October 21 | 7:00-8:00 PM
November 18 | 7:00-8:00 PM
December 16 | 7:00-8:00 PM

💰 Funding available | Applications open September 1

📩 Questions? Contact Dr. Jackson, MSTAT Director

🔗 Register now: https://statistics.rice.edu/academics/graduate/master-statistics

10/07/2026

Join us for the Statistics Colloquium featuring Dr. Yufeng Liu, Ph.D., John D. MacArthur Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, presenting "Low-rank Reinforcement Learning with Heterogeneous Human Feedback."

Dr. Liu will present reinforcement learning methods that use hidden structures in human feedback to make learning more scalable and efficient. The talk will show how these methods can improve personalized recommendations in e-commerce and apply to reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) in large language models, accommodating diverse user preferences.

📅 Monday, October 19, 2026
⏰ 4:00 PM
📍 Maxfield Hall Room 251, Rice University

https://events.rice.edu/statistics/event/439170-statistics-colloquium-yufeng-liu-university-of

10/02/2026

🗣️ Join us for the 2026 James R. Thompson Distinguished Lecture at Rice Engineering and Computing.

The Rice University Statistics department is honored to welcome Dr. Xiao-Li MENG, Whipple V.N. Jones Professor of Statistics at Harvard University, for a talk titled "Privacy, Data Privacy, and Differential Privacy."

Dr. Meng will trace the idea of privacy from a 19th-century legal right to the challenges of today's digital age, examining how Differential Privacy works, why some common assumptions about its protections can break down, and what a broader statistical perspective can offer in an interconnected world.

📅 Thursday, November 5, 2026 | 4:00 p.m. CST
📍 McMurtry Auditorium, Duncan Hall
🎉 Reception to follow in Martel Hall
🔗 Register: https://statistics.rice.edu/news-events/james-r-thompson-distinguished-lecture-series

We hope to see you there!

09/30/2026

Join us for the Statistics Colloquium featuring Dr. Corey Abramson, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Center for Computational Insights on Inequality and Society at Rice University, presenting "Granular Data at Scale: Reducing Human and Machine Error in Ethnographic Research."

Dr. Abramson will examine how computational tools, including artificial intelligence, are reshaping what ethnography can do in scaled team-science. Drawing on two decades of work across multiple large-scale qualitative studies, he will illustrate uses of computation in data aggregation, processing, and analysis aimed at reducing error in complex real-world research settings.

📅 Monday, October 5, 2026
⏰ 4:00 PM
📍 Maxfield Hall Room 251, Rice University

https://events.rice.edu/statistics/event/438793-statistics-colloquium-corey-abramson-rice

09/29/2026

Who's really No. 1? Ask five sports outlets and you may get five different answers.

Rice statisticians, in collaboration with Cornell University, have built a better way to make sense of competing sports rankings. Led by doctoral student Rose Graves, the team's new Bayesian model was tested on four years of MLB player rankings and can combine conflicting lists, measure uncertainty and reveal what drives them.

The method could also help in areas far beyond baseball, from search engines to elections to medicine.

Read the full story: https://news.rice.edu/news/2026/whos-really-no-1-rice-statisticians-build-better-way-make-sense-competing-sports-rankings

09/21/2026

Join the Rice Department of Statistics for a colloquium with Dr. Stefan Wild of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, presenting "Reinforcement Learning- and Adaptive Subspace-Assisted Zeroth-Order Optimization Solvers for Improved Robustness of Sequential Design."

Dr. Wild will explore optimization solvers for tuning complex systems when little is known in advance about their behavior. Drawing on algorithms that learn and adapt as they run, he will present methods that scale to very large problems and stay reliable even when conditions shift partway through.

📅 Monday, September 28, 2026
⏰ 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM CDT
📍 Maxfield Hall 251, Rice University

Read the full abstract: https://events.rice.edu/statistics/event/438792-statistics-colloquium-stefan-wild-lawrence

09/18/2026

🎓 Advance Your Career with Rice University's Master of Statistics (MSTAT)

Statistics powers AI and data science, and the demand for skilled statisticians has never been higher. Rice's MSTAT program offers customized training to prepare you for rewarding, high-impact careers.

Join us for a virtual information session to learn how this program can help you reach your goals.

▶️ October 21 | 7-8 PM CST
▶️ November 18 | 7-8 PM CST
▶️ December 16 | 7-8 PM CST
💰 Funding available!

🔗 Register now: https://statistics.rice.edu/academics/graduate/master-statistics

09/16/2026

Does the academic discipline on a scientist's doctorate still describe them decades later?

A new PLOS One study led by Gina Pizzo, lecturer in Rice University's Department of Statistics, and Aaron McCright of Michigan State University says often not, and offers a new way to measure it.

Their five-dimensional Disciplinarity Scale captures how closely a scientist's current professional life still aligns with the field in which they trained, looking at their department, professional association, publishing outlets, how peers see them and how they identify themselves.

Tested with 4,113 tenure-system science faculty at 83 U.S. research universities, the study found that scientists' disciplinary affiliations tended to broaden the longer they had been out of graduate school, especially among those with more cross-disciplinary research experience.

Read more:

Rice and Michigan State researchers have developed and validated a new way to measure the extent to which scientists remain closely connected to the core of their discipline over the course of their careers.