From teaching college-level statistics to working as a data scientist at Microsoft, our newest alumni are off to some exciting new opportunities in the coming year. 

Kelsey Grinde, PhD

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• Future Plans: I will be starting a position this fall as a statistics teaching post-doc in the Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn.
• Dissertation: “Statistical inference in admixed populations”
• Advisor: Sharon Browning
• Recipient of the 2019 Thomas R. Fleming Excellence in Biostatistics Award

Arjun Sondhi, PhD

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• Future Plans: Quantitative Scientist, Flatiron Health
• Dissertation: “Statistical miscellany: causality, networks, and bandits”
• Advisor: Ali Shojaie

Phuong Vu, PhD

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• Future Plans: Biostatistician at Seattle Children’s Research Institute
• Dissertation: “Dimension reduction for spatially-misaligned and multi-pollutant data with missing observations”
• Advisor: Adam Szpiro
• Recipient of the 2019 SPH Outstanding PhD Student Award

Brian Williamson, PhD

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• Future Plans: Postdoctoral fellow, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center with Dr. Ying Huang
• Dissertation: “A unified approach to nonparametric variable importance assessment using flexible estimation procedures”
• Advisors: Marco Carone, Noah Simon
• Recipient of the 2019 Exceptional Service in Biostatistics Award

Alexander Paynter, MS

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• Future Plans: Biostatistician, Seattle Children's Research Institute
• Thesis: “Tuning parameter selection for a penalized maximum likelihood estimator of species richness”
• Advisor: Amy Willis
• Recipient of the 2019 SPH Outstanding MS Student Award

Anqi Cheng, PhD

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• Future Plans: I'm going to work at Microsoft as a Data Scientist.
• Dissertation: “Nonparametric and semiparametric estimation of distributional causal effect using instrumental variables”
• Advisor: Gary Chan

Anu Mishra, PhD

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• Future Plans: Statistical Consultant, UNICEF
• Advisors: Kathleen Kerr, Lurdes Inoue

Yuxiang Xie, PhD

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• Future Plans: Data Scientist at Snap Inc.
• Dissertation: “Statistical methods for sparse binary, count data and treatment effect heterogeneity”
• Advisor: Gary Chan

Weija Fu, MS

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• Future Plans: Research Assistant, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
• Thesis: "Statistical Issues in Microbiome Data Analysis: Batch Effects and Multi-Omics Analysis"
• Advisor: Michael Wu