Program Schedule

The conference will take place at the Multipurpose Room at the International Center unless otherwise noted in the schedule below.

Day 1 Friday, May 22, 2026
9:00 – 9:30 AM
☕ Breakfast & Registration
9:30 – 9:45 AM
🎤 Welcome & Opening Remarks by Associate Dean Thomas Lee and Department Chair Jiming Jiang
9:45 – 10:45 AM
Keynote Address I Chair: Xiucai Ding
Iain Johnstone
Marjorie Mhoon Fair Professor in Quantitative Science, Department of Statistics, Stanford University
Title: Estimating covariance in high-dimensional random effect models
10:45 – 11:00 AM
☕ Coffee Break
11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
Technical Session I Chair: Xiucai Ding
Hans-Georg Müller
Distinguished Professor, Department of Statistics, UC Davis
Title: Metric Statistics: Basic Tools and Distribution-valued Processes
Xiaotong Shen
John Black Johnston Distinguished Professor, School of Statistics, University of Minnesota
Title: Manifold-Aligned Generative Transport
12:30 – 1:30 PM
🍽 Lunch
1:30 – 3:45 PM
Technical Session II Chair: Mina Karzand
Hernando Ombao
Professor of Statistics, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)
Title: Spectral Transfer Entropy: Modeling Brain Functional Connectivity
Dimitris N. Politis
Distinguished Professor, Department of Mathematics & Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute, UC San Diego
Title: Flat-Top Corrected Spectral Density Estimation and a Test for Over-differencing
Mohsen Pourahmadi
Professor Emeritus, Department of Statistics, Texas A&M University
Title: Regressions in Covariances, Dependencies and Graphs
3:45 – 4:00 PM
☕ Coffee Break
4:00 – 5:00 PM
Peter Hall Memorial Session Chair: Jiming Jiang
5:15 – 6:15 PM
📊 Poster Session & Reception
6:30 – 8:30 PM
🍴 Dinner
Day 2 Saturday, May 23, 2026
9:00 – 9:30 AM
☕ Breakfast
9:30 – 11:15 AM
Technical Session III Chair: Chris Drake
Richard A. Davis
Howard Levene Professor of Statistics, Department of Statistics, Columbia University
Title: Sample Splitting and Assessing Goodness-of-fit of Time Series
Òscar Jordà
Senior Policy Advisor, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco & Professor of Economics, UC Davis
Title: High-Dimensional Nonparametric Local Projections
11:15 – 11:30 AM
☕ Coffee Break
11:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Bob Shumway Memorial Session Chair: Prabir Burman
12:30 – 1:30 PM
🍽 Lunch
1:30 – 3:00 PM
Alumni Session Chair: Xiucai Ding
Paromita Dubey
Kenneth King Stonier Assistant Professor of Data Sciences and Operations USC Marshall School of Business
Title: Neyman-Orthogonal Comparison of Regression Functions
Yaqing Chen
Assistant Professor, Department of Statistics Rutgers University
Title: Modeling Amplitude and Phase Variation of Multivariate Random Processes in Metric Spaces
Alex Petersen
Associate Professor, Department of Statistics Brigham Young University
Title: Nested Testing of Covariance Separability in Two-Way Data via Empirical Likelihood
3:00 – 3:15 PM
☕ Coffee Break
3:15 – 4:45 PM
💬 Panel Discussion Moderator: Shizhe Chen

Topic: Open Problems and Future Directions in Industry

Yuanyuan Li
Senior Research Scientist, Munich Re
Panelist (Ph.D. 2022)
Xiancheng Lin
Machine Learning Engineer, Uber
Panelist (Ph.D. 2024)
Yi Han
Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Samsung Electronics America
Panelist (Ph.D. 2024)
Jue Wang
Software Engineer, ML at Youtube
Panelist (Ph.D. 2024)
4:45 – 5:00 PM
🎤 Concluding Remarks