KAUST alumna’s paper recognized by American Statistical Association

About

KAUST alumna Yuan Yan recently received an honorable mention from the American Statistical Association (ASA) for her paper entitled "Vector Autoregressive Models with Spatially Structured Coefficients for Time Series on a Spatial Grid." Yan, who participated in the ASA student paper competition last year, will be officially recognized for her contribution later this year at the association's 2019 Joint Statistical Meetings in Denver, Colorado, U.S., from July 27 to August 1.

Yan, who graduated from KAUST in December 2018 with a Ph.D. in statistics, stated she was pleasantly surprised by her acknowledgement from the ASA.

"It was a surprise because they received so many submissions," she noted. "It was a great honor and encouragement for me...ince as a junior researcher, I did not have confidence in my paper."

Current research and time at KAUST

Yan is currently carrying out research as a postdoctoral fellow at Dalhousie University, Canada. Her research there lies in the field of fisheries science and focuses on applying spatial statistical models to help monitor fish populations and their health.

"We analyze fishery data, build the model and predict fish abundance in the future. Then, based on these analyses, policies could be made, such as whether to limit fishing in a certain area or for a certain type of fish in order to keep our ocean sustainable," she explained.

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