Two graduate students in the department of statistics at the George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing at Rice University received awards at the Houston Area Chapter of the American Statistical Association (HACASA) 2025 Student Symposium. The purpose of this symposium, which was held on January 17th in Houston, was to showcase student research and foster networking and scientific collaboration among statistics researchers in the area.
Konstantin Larin was awarded the best presentation in the Statistical Inference and Methodology session for his submission titled, "Efficient Bayesian inference for two-stage models.” Larin’s research involves developing Bayesian models for large and dependent data, interpretable machine learning, and inference with uncertain model inputs, all of which can be used to address urgent questions in public health, epidemiology and environmental justice, economics, and finance. Konstantin's thesis advisor is Daniel Kowal, an associate professor of statistics at Rice and Cornell Universities.
Meredith Kruse was awarded the best presentation in the Case Studies and Applications session for her submission titled, "Graphical EGARCH: Insurance Sector Volatility Modeling." Kruse’s doctoral research involves exploring statistical methods in large-scale temporal modeling for financial risk assessments, particularly as it relates to portfolio fund management and assessing insurance volatility. Her thesis advisor is Katherine Ensor, the Noah G. Harding Professor of Statistics at Rice.