Marc G. Genton is a Distinguished Professor of Statistics and the Principal Investigator of the Spatio-Temporal Statistics and Data Science (STSDS) Research Group. He is affiliated with the Statistics (STAT) program and to the Applied Mathematics and Computational Science (AMCS) program.

Research Interests

​Professor Genton's main research interests concern statistical analysis, visualization, modeling, prediction, and uncertainty quantification of spatiotemporal data, with applications in environmental and climate science, renewable energies such as wind and solar power, geophysics, and marine science. His research activities also include skewed multivariate non-Gaussian distributions and robust statistics.

Education and early career

Genton received his Ph.D. in Statistics in 1996 from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland. He also holds a M.S. degree in Applied Mathematics teaching from EPFL. Prior to joining KAUST, he held faculty positions at MIT, North Carolina State University, the University of Geneva, and Texas A&M University.

Areas of expertise and current scientific interests

Most of the Genton’s research centers around spatial and spatio-temporal statistics. His interests include the statistical analysis, visualization, modeling, prediction, and uncertainty quantification of spatio-temporal data, with applications in environmental and climate science, renewable energies, geophysics, and marine science.

Editorial activities

Genton has over 230 publications and has edited a book on skew-elliptical distributions and their applications that goes beyond normality. He has given over 360 presentations at conferences and universities worldwide. Google scholar.

Career recognitions

Genton is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. In 2010, he received the El-Shaarawi award for excellence from the International Environmetrics Society (TIES) and the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Section on Statistics and the Environment (ENVR) of the American Statistical Association (ASA). In 2017, he received the Wilcoxon Award for Best Applications Paper in the journal Technometrics.

Why have you chosen Statistics?

I have chosen Statistics because I felt that Mathematics was too easy.

Why KAUST?

Because of the thrill of being part of a brand-new university like no other.

Courses

Professor Marc Genton's Courses

Honors & Awards

• 2020 Georges Matheron Lecturer of the International Association for Mathematical Geosciences 
• 2019 Service Award from ISI for serving as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Stat from January 2015 to December 2017
• 2018 JRSS-A paper read before the Royal Statistical Society
• 2018 Award for Best 2016 Paper in JABES​
• 2017 Wilcoxon Award for Best Applications Paper in Technometrics
• 2012 Fellow: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
• 2011 ADVANCE Distinguished Lecture: Kansas State University​
• 2010 Distinguished Achievement Award: from the Section on Statistics and the Environment (ENVR) of the American Statistical Association (ASA)
• 2010 El-Shaarawi Award for Excellence: from the International Environmetrics Society (TIES)
• 2010 Fellow: Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS)
• 2009 Fellow: Royal Statistical Society (RSS)
• 2008 Elected: to the International Statistical Institute (ISI)
• 2007 Fellow: American Statistical Association (ASA)
• 1996: Ph.D. in Statistics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland 
• 1994: Certificate of Applied Mathematics Teaching, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland
• 1992: Degree in Applied Mathematics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland