ABOUT ME      

I received a B.S. in Mathematics from National Taiwan University and a PhD in Statistics from UC Berkeley. My thesis advisors were Jack Kiefer and Lucien Le Cam.

My first job was Assistant Professor at the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Iowa. From there I moved to my current institute, UC Davis. Except for a brief stint as Associate Professor at the Department of Statistics, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, I've been at UCD for nearly my entire career.

For research, I enjoy both theoretical and applied projects, and have collaborated with biologists, demographers, medical doctors, neuroscientists, and sociologists.  

I have worked in several areas, including survival analysis, functional data analysis, joint modeling of longitudinal and survival data, neuroimaging data analysis and dimension reduction methods.   More recently, I've ventured into machine learning, leveraging deep neural networks for analyzing survival and functional data.  

My research group in Functional Data Analysis has developed a matlab package PACE as well as a parallel R-package, fdapace, which is constantly being expanded and improved. In addition, my research team in survival analysis has developed the R-package JSM for the joint modeling of survival and longitudinal data.

For teaching, I emphasize concepts, interpretation, and statistical thinking. The ultimate goal is to enable and stimulate students to learn on their own.

HONORS and AWARDS:

• Academician of Academia Sinica, 2022
• Humboldt Research Award, 2020
• Distinguished Achievement Award (International Chinese Statistical Association), 2018
• Noether Senior Research Award, 2016
• Distinguished Professor, University of California, 2013
• Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, elected 2011
• Medallion Lecture of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, 2007
• Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute, elected 2001
• Fellow of the American Statistical Association, elected 1998
• Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, elected 1998