Spotlight on New PhD Students and Recent Graduates
Welcome New PhD Students
![Headshot of Daniel Ghebresilassie](/sites/cla.umn.edu/files/styles/teaser_image_portrait/public/daniel_ghebresilassie.png?h=ef775988&itok=ERPvarwl)
Previous Institution:
MSU-Mankato
Research Interests:
Causal Inference, high dimension reduction, and statistical machine learning.
![Headshot photo of Hyun Jung (HJ) Koo smiling on a busy street](/sites/cla.umn.edu/files/styles/teaser_image_portrait/public/hyun_jung_hj_koo.jpeg?h=3cd06fc8&itok=Q3SzMYvD)
Previous Institution:
University of Michigan - Ann Arbor (BS and MS)
Research Interests:
High-dimensional and complex longitudinal data, causal inference, and applications of statistics in public health and medicine.
Hobbies:
Running, playing golf, and spending time with my dog (Milo).
![Portrait of Alex Kuhn outdoors wearing a backpack](/sites/cla.umn.edu/files/styles/teaser_image_portrait/public/alex_kuhn.jpeg?h=dc9ab0a7&itok=Vc9o3_Te)
Previous Institution:
Oregon State University (MS in Statistics)
Research Interests:
High-dimensional inference, multiple hypothesis testing, uncertainty quantification for machine learning algorithms, data perturbation and resampling techniques, and reproducible data analysis.
Hobbies:
I enjoy cooking, playing guitar, reading, and playing video games in my free time.
![Headshot of Jeonghwan Lee](/sites/cla.umn.edu/files/styles/teaser_image_portrait/public/jeonghwan_lee.jpeg?h=ffa8e298&itok=u8Lj_1av)
Previous Institution:
Yonsei University, Korea
Research Interests:
Bayesian inference and causal Inference.
Hobbies:
Watching movies
![Headshot of An Luo](/sites/cla.umn.edu/files/styles/teaser_image_portrait/public/an_luo.jpeg?h=a0bd0d9d&itok=DAZ1LVPu)
Previous Institution:
Southern University of Science and Technology (undergrad)
Research Interests:
Model selection, computational statistics, and biostatistics.
Hobbies:
Listening to pop music, running, swimming, table tennis.
![Headshot of Seungwon Lee](/sites/cla.umn.edu/files/styles/teaser_image_portrait/public/seungwon_lee.png?h=a37d9211&itok=dj15iw5j)
Previous Institution:
Sungkyunkwan University
Research Interests:
I do not have a specific one yet.
Hobbies:
Exercise
![Headshot of Nouman Qureshi](/sites/cla.umn.edu/files/styles/teaser_image_portrait/public/nouman_qureshi_img-20221221-wa0024_0.jpg?h=ee81aa5a&itok=04y6b9C7)
Previous Institution:
Government College University, Lahore, Pakistan
Research Interests:
Finite population sampling and applied regression analysis.
Hobbies:
Traveling, cooking, nature photography, and watching TV.
Additional students not pictured: Jinwen Fu and Difan Ouyang.
Congratulations Recent PhD Graduates!
![Headshot of Riddhiman Bhattacharya](/sites/cla.umn.edu/files/styles/teaser_image_portrait/public/riddhiman_bhattacharya.jpeg?h=04d92ac6&itok=gVaZ-q6Z)
Dissertation Title:
Optimization and Sampling via Iterative Algorithms
Dissertation Committee:
Tiefeng Jiang, Galin Jones, Wei-Kuo Chen, Xiaoou Li
What's Next:
Currently a post-doc at Krannert School of Management
![Headshot of Austin Brown](/sites/cla.umn.edu/files/styles/teaser_image_portrait/public/austin_brown.jpg?h=4ccf5f42&itok=NvgFaQ70)
Dissertation Title:
Some Convergence Results for Metropolis-Hastings Algorithms
Dissertation Committee:
Galin Jones, Qian Qin, Wei-Kuo Chen, Charles Geyer
What's Next:
I am a Research Fellow at the University of Warwick
![Headshot of Kaibo Gong](/sites/cla.umn.edu/files/styles/teaser_image_portrait/public/kaibo_gong.jpeg?h=fcfe2abf&itok=0C8wiXwi)
Dissertation Title:
Topics on Climate Model Output Analyses
Dissertation Committee:
Snigdhansu Chatterjee, Ravi Janardan, Nathaniel Helwig, and Lan Liu
What's Next:
Research Scientist at Meta Platforms, Inc
![Headshot of Yang Song](/sites/cla.umn.edu/files/styles/teaser_image_portrait/public/yang_song.jpeg?h=db7aa3e1&itok=EMdQiv4Q)
Dissertation Title:
Three Topics in Statistical Learning
Dissertation Committee:
Charles R. Doss, Wei Pan, Yuhong Yang, Hui Zou
What's Next:
Currently working at Google as a software engineer, mainly focusing on semantic parsing models