Karissa Huang

I am very grateful that my trip to the GRAMSIA workshop in Boston was supported by the KAG travel grant from May 16-20, 2023. GRAMSIA is a workshop hosted by the Harvard University Center of Mathematical Sciences and Applications. The topic was Graphical Models, Statistical Inference, and Algorithms, and the content of the talks ranged from theory to applications. This workshop was hosted by professors David Gamarnik (MIT), Kavita Ramanan (Brown), and Prasad Tetali (Carnegie Mellon), and included talks from researchers all around the world. Although the content of the talks was quite diverse and each talk gave insight into new and quite different results, they were all connected by the common thread of networks, graphical models, and algorithms. It was cool to see some techniques that I am familiar with put into play in areas that I have yet to understand well, and it was also amazing to see new techniques used to improve upon known results.

This was a great opportunity for me to meet with some old collaborators at Harvard, and connect with new PhD students and researchers, and I am thankful that the KAG grant was able to cover some of the costs of traveling to the east coast!

Dan Soriano

The KAG travel fund supported my trip to Austin, Texas for the 2023 American Causal Inference Conference (ACIC). ACIC is an interdisciplinary conference designed to bring together researchers, students, and practitioners of causal inference with an emphasis on theory, methodology, and application.

My collaborators and I presented our work "Design sensitivity and its implications for weighted observational studies" in the weighting methodologies in causal inference panel. This presentation led to several thoughtful conversations with fellow causal inference researchers that will improve our final research paper.

There were several social events as a part of the conference that allowed me to establish relationships with other researchers in the field, in addition to strengthening my existing relationships. The fact that we were able to share some amazing southern barbecue definitely didn't hurt! I am extremely grateful that the KAG travel fund allowed me to attend this memorable and exciting conference.

Tiffany Tang

I am very grateful for the KAG travel grant for supporting my participation in the 2023 ASA/IMS Spring Research Conference (SRC) on Statistics in Industry and Technology in Banff, Alberta, Canada from May 24 - 26. Because of the KAG travel grant, I was able to share my research on “Integrated Principal Components Analysis” in an invited session on data fusion at this conference. This was a great learning experience as it enabled me to both share my research with a broad audience and receive valuable feedback from experts in this field. I also attended many interesting sessions on state-of-the-art research in science-guided statistical learning, uncertainty quantification, design of experiments, and many other important topics.

Moreover, it was a privilege to be able to meet and interact with a diverse range of statisticians from academia and industry at this conference. Having gone through much of my PhD during the COVID-19 pandemic, these in-person professional development opportunities have been limited. SRC is a smaller conference, which made it an even better opportunity to meet other researchers and to build a community. I am thankful to have been able to attend such a vibrant in-person conference and to have made many lasting personal connections. This would not have been possible without the KAG travel grant, and I sincerely appreciate the department for the grant and opportunity.

Tiffany Ding

I am grateful for the KAG travel grant for enabling me to attend the 2023 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) in Toronto, Canada. JSM is the largest statistics conference in North America, attended by over 6000 people and with over 600 sessions throughout the week. This was my first time attending a statistics conference, and it was a great experience. Through the numerous sessions and talks that happen at JSM, I was exposed to many new ideas and now my brain feels alive with potential directions for where to take my research next! It was also great to chat with people whose work I am familiar with but have never met in person and to catch up with friends and collaborators from other institutions. Finally, I was very happy to be able to celebrate in person with my advisor Ryan Tibshirani after he received the 2023 COPSS Presidents' Award. 

Thank you to the department and the KAG fund for making this experience possible.

Hyunsuk Kim

The KAG travel fund supported my trip to Toronto for the 2023 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM). JSM is the largest annual conference in the field of statistics held in North America. The conference featured presentations on a wide variety of topics, with many renowned professors in statistics among the presenters. As a student in a Statistics PhD program who just finished the second year, it was a great opportunity to explore diverse topics in statistics and gain insights from fellow researchers' work. 

Additionally, since researchers from all around the world attend JSM, I had the opportunity to meet new PhD students in the field and connect with Korean PhD students and professors at the Korean statisticians network meeting. I was also able to reconnect with old friends from college and discuss each other's research. Although I wasn't presenting at JSM this year, I look forward to participating and presenting my work at future JSMs and networking with more researchers.

I'm deeply thankful that the KAG grant covered the costs for registration and travel, allowing me to gain valuable experience that helped shape my future path in the PhD program.