Environmental Statistics

Professor Ying Sun elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association

3 min read ·
Ying Sun joins the elite ranks of ASA Fellows in 2025 for her contributions to spatial statistics, mentoring and global outreach.

Workshop on Computational Space-Time Statistics

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B1 L4 R4102

Workshop on Computational Space-Time Statistics

Uncertainty Quantification of Tsunami Models

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B1

In this talk, we first show various strategies for the efficient emulation of simulators having uncertain inputs, with applications to tsunami wave modelling. A fast surrogate of the simulator's time series of outputs is provided by the outer product emulator.

Workshop on Statistical Process Monitoring and Risk Assessment for Engineering and Spatial Environmental Applications

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B1 L4 R4102

LIST OF SPEAKERS KAUST Environmental Statistics Group, CEMSE Division - Ying Sun (ying.sun@kaust.edu.sa), PI - Fouzi Harrou (fouzi.harrou@kaust.edu.sa), Postdoc - Huang Huang (huang.huang@kaust.edu.sa), PhD Student - Tianbo Chen (tianbo.chen@kaust.edu.sa), PhD Student - Rui Meng (rui.meng@kaust.edu.sa), Master Student - Sulaiman Binkhamis (sulaiman.binkhamis@kaust.edu.sa), Master Student Hydrology and Land Observation Group, BESE Division - Gaohong Yin (gaohong.yin@kaust.edu.sa), Master Student Collaborators - NorEddine Ghaffour (noreddine.ghaffour@kaust.edu.sa), co-I, WDRC - Matthew McCabe

Heteroscedastic BART Using Multiplicative Regression Trees

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B1 L4 R4102

Bayesian additive regression trees (BART) has become increasingly popular as a flexible and scalable non-parametric model useful in many modern applied statistics regression problems. It brings many advantages to the practitioner dealing with large and complex non-linear response surfaces, such as a matrix-free formulation and the lack of a requirement to specify a regression basis a priori.

Computational Methods for Large Spatio-temporal Datasets and Functional Data Ranking

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B1 L4 R4102

In this thesis defense, I will talk about two topics—computational methods for large spatial datasets and functional data ranking. Both are tackling the challenges of big and high-dimensional data.

Professor Sun receives the Environment Early Investigator Award 2017

1 min read ·
Ying Sun, Professor of Statistics in the Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences & Engineering Division (CEMSE) of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, has been awarded the 2017 Early Investigator Award by the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and the Environment (ENVR).

Ph.D. Student Gaurav Agarwal received an Honorable Mention from ENVR Student Paper Competition

1 min read ·
Ph.D. student Gaurav Agarwal received an Honorable Mention from ENVR student paper competition for his paper entitled "Quantile function modeling with application to salinity tolerance analysis in plant data."

Students shine on the statistics stage

1 min read ·
KAUST Ph.D. alumna Sabrina Vettori and Ph.D. student Yuxiao Li have been selected by the Eastern North American Region (ENAR) of the International Biometric Society to receive a Distinguished Student Paper Award at the 2018 ENAR Spring Meeting.

Second year Ph.D. student to receive top statistics award

1 min read ·
KAUST second year Ph.D. student Yuxiao Li has been selected to receive a Student Paper Award from the American Statistical Association (ASA) for his paper entitled "Efficient Estimation of Non-stationary Spatial Covariance Functions with Application to High-resolution Climate Model Emulation."

Taking aim at outliers

1 min read ·
Automatic detection of uncharacteristic data sequences could change the way data is processed and analyzed.

Statistics plot pollution to inform policy

1 min read ·
The spatial variation in different air pollution components helps identify possible targets for pollution control.

Honing in on hotspots in spatial data

1 min read ·
More accurate detection of hotspot clusters provides new insights into the behavior of air pollution.

KAUST Ph.D. student receives environmetrics best poster award

1 min read ·
Ghulam Qadir, a third-year Ph.D. student in KAUST Associate Professor Ying Sun's Environmental Statistics research group, recently received a best poster award from the Italian Environmetrics Society (GRASPA) and the International Environmetrics Society (TIES) at the GRASPA 2019 conference held from July 15 to 16 in Pescara, Italy.

CEMSE Division student spotlight: Gaurav Agarwal

1 min read ·
Gaurav Agarwal firmly believes in the age-old adage that patience is a virtue. Without patience, life’s challenges cannot be overcome, and a steadfast belief in perseverance has served the statistics Ph.D. student well throughout his academic career.

Meet KAUST prospective student: Cristian Felipe Jiménez Varón

1 min read ·
Cristian Felipe Jiménez Varón is an applied mathematics graduate who will join KAUST from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia Sede Manizales (UNAL), Colombia. He also holds dual bachelor's degrees in industrial engineering and chemical engineering fromUNAL .

Modeling rainfall drop by drop

1 min read ·
A high-frequency model developed using data from new high-precision rain gauges gives fresh insight into the dynamics of rain and runoff events.

Trio of tuning tools for modeling large spatial datasets

1 min read ·
Statistical tools help fine-tune the parameters and approximations of models used to make sense of large spatial datasets.

Yuxiao Li

Ph.D., Statistics
Yuxiao Li obtained his Ph.D. degree in Statistics from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) under the supervision of Professor Ying Sun in the Environmental Statistics group. Education and Early Career: Yuxiao obtained his Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics in 2013 from Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China. In 2015, he graduated with his Master of Science degree in Statistics from the University of California at Irvine, USA. Then, he joined the Ph.D. program in Statistics at KAUST. Research Interest: His research interests lie in the fields such as

Wu Wang

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Statistics
Wu Wang is a postdoctoral fellow at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) working with Professor Ying Sun in the environmental statistics research group. Education Wu Wang received his Ph.D. degree in June 2017 from Fudan University, China. He joined KAUST in September 2017 Wu Wang received his Bachelor's degree in 2008 from East China Normal University Research Interest Wu Wang' s research interests lie in spatial varying coefficients regression with application in particulate matter modeling. He is also interested in functional data analysis, especially functional linear

Junho Lee

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Statistics
Short Bio about yourself Junho Lee received both undergraduate and Master degrees in Statistics from Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. After his Master degree and before beginning his Ph.D. study, Junho Lee had worked at Korea Credit Bureau as a researcher to develop the Credit Scoring system for Bank, Credit Card and Insurance industries in Korea. Before joining KAUST in August 2017, Junho Lee received his Ph.D. in Statistics from University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. Here, at KAUST, Junho Lee is working at Environmental Statistics Group with Prof. Ying Sun. Education and Early Career Ph.D. in

Jose Hermenegildo Ramirez Gonzalez

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Statistics

Huang Huang

Ph.D., Statistics
Career 2022-, Quantitative Researcher & Developer, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), UAE. 2019-2021, Research Scientist, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia. Research statistical modeling of multivariate spatio-temporal data with large size Apply machine learning models to environmental data with comparisons to spatio-temporal statistical models Lead reading groups on spatial machine learning Collaborate with computer scientists in developing high-performance packages for large geostatistical inference Mentor students on their internship on research

Ghulam A. Qadir

Ph.D. Student, Statistics
Ghulam Qadir is a Ph.D. student in the Environmental Statistics group under the supervision of Prof. Ying Sun at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). He believes that KAUST creates a perfect research-friendly environment where students are provided with excellent resources which allow them to turn their research creativity into valuable discoveries as well as make them ready for their future endeavors. Education and Early Career M.Sc. Statistics, Hindu College, University of Delhi, 2016 B.Sc. (Hons.) Statistics, Hindu College, University of Delhi, 2014 Research

Gaurav Agarwal

Ph.D., Statistics
Gaurav Agarwal obtained his Ph.D. degree in Statistics from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) under the supervision of Professor Ying Sun in the Environmental Statistics group. His research focused on developing statistical models for dealing with the issues concerning the environment. Bringing data to life, with statistics and programming excites him. Besides research, he likes to dance and work out. Research Interest Gaurav's research interests included Multivariate quantiles, Non-parametric statistics, Functional data analysis, and Spatial Statistics. Awards and

Fouzi Harrou

Senior Research Scientist, Statistics
Harrou’s research focuses on statistical decision theory and its applications, multivariate statistical process monitoring, anomaly detection and diagnosis.

Cristian Felipe Jiménez Varón

Ph.D. Student, Statistics
Cristian Felipe Jiménez Varón is a Ph.D. candidate in the KAUST Environmental Statistics research group under the supervision of Professor Ying Sun. Before joining KAUST, Cristian obtained a master's degree in applied mathematics from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia Sede Manizales (UNAL), Colombia. He also holds dual bachelor's degrees in industrial engineering and chemical engineering from UNAL. Research Interests Cristian's research interests include the analysis of large volumes of data, statistical modeling and environmental statistics.

Carolina D. Euan Campos

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Statistics
Dr. Carolina Euan is a postdoctoral fellow at the Environmental Statistics Research Group at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). Education and Early Career Carolina Euan received her Ph.D. degree in Probability and Statistics from the Center for Research in Mathematics (CIMAT), Mexico, in 2016. She joined KAUST as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in October 2016. Research Interest High dimensional Time Series, Spatio-Temporal Models, Non-Stationary Processes, Complex Data Visualization, Computational Statistics. Awards and Distinctions Sylvia Esterby Presentation Award