Speaker: Dr. John Lafferty, Yale University
John Lafferty is John C. Malone Professor in the Department of Statistics and Data Science at Yale, with a secondary appointment in Computer Science. Lafferty is an Associate Director of the Wu Tsai Institute at Yale, a University-wide institute focused on the mission of understanding human cognition and exploring human potential by sparking interdisciplinary inquiry. He is Director of the Center for Neurocomputation and Machine Intelligence within the WTI. Lafferty’s most recent research is driven by the goal of using computational modeling, in particular machine learning, to gain insight into the remarkable abilities of the human brain. This computational lens can complement the specialized, biologically-grounded studies of traditional experimental science and mechanistic computational models. Lafferty’s research group develops machine learning methodology together with theory that can help explain the behavior of the underlying algorithms.

Speaker: Dr. Heping Zhang, Yale University
Heping Zhang, Ph.D. is Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Biostatistics, Professor in the Child Study Center, Professor of Statistics and Data Science, and Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences, Yale University. He directs the Collaborative Center for Statistics in Science that coordinates clinical trials to evaluate treatment effectiveness for infertility. He was named the 2008 Myrto Lefokopoulou distinguished lecturer by Harvard School of Public Health and a Medallion Award and Lecturer by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. He is a former-editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association - Applications and Case Studies. He was the recipient of the 2022 Neyman Award and Lecture by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and the 2023 Distinguished Achievement Award by the International Chinese Statistical Association. He was selected as a 2023 Highly Cited Researcher in cross field by Web of Science. His research interests are to develop and apply statistical methods in biomedical research including epidemiology, genetics, mental health, cognition, and reproductive medicine.

Speaker: Dr. Nancy Zhang, University of Pennsylvania
Dr. Zhang is a Ge Li and Ning Zhao Professor of Statistics in The Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania.  Her research focuses primarily on the development of statistical methods and computational algorithms for the analysis of data from high-throughput biological experiments.  She has made contributions to copy number and structural variant detection, to the modeling and estimation of intra-tumor genetic heterogeneity, and to the modeling and analysis of single-cell and spatial genomic data.  In Statistics, she has made contributions to change-point analysis, variable selection, and model selection. Dr. Zhang obtained her Ph.D. in Statistics in 2005 from Stanford University.  After one year of postdoctoral training at University of California, Berkeley, she returned to the Department of Statistics at Stanford University as Assistant Professor in 2006.  She received the Sloan Fellowship in 2011, and formally moved to University of Pennsylvania with tenure in 2012.  She was awarded the Medallion Lectureship by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 2021 and the P.R. Krishnaiah Memorial Lectureship in 2023.  Her work has been funded by grants from the NSF, NIH, and Mark Foundation.  At Penn, she is a member of the Abramson Cancer Center and the Graduate Group in Genomics and Computational Biology, and Senior Fellow of Institute of Biomedical Informatics.  Dr. Zhang currently serves as the Vice Dean of the Wharton Doctoral Program.

Speaker: Dr. Michael Lopez, NFL
Michael Lopez is a Senior Director of Football Data and Analytics at the National Football League. At the National Football League, his work centers on how to use data to enhance and better understand the game of football. He is an Associate Editor at the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, and has written for FiveThirtyEight, Deadspin, Sports Illustrated, and Hockey News. From 2014 through 2021, he worked at Skidmore College, first as an Assistant Professor and then as a Lecturer and Research Associate. In 2020, he was named the American Statistical Association’s Statistics in Sports Significant Contributor Award.