I am now working at Virginia Tech since August 2016 as a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Statistics.
I graduated from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in July 2016 with a PhD in Statistics . I studied with Prof. Yuguo Chen (network inference) and Prof. Xiaofeng Shao (modern resampling methods). My Erdős number is 3, via Prof. Yuguo Chen via Prof. Persi Diaconis.
I grew up in Kolkata, India where I did my schooling at RKM Narendrapur. I went to college at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, where I received a B.Stat (2007) and an M.Stat (2009), both first class with distinction.
After graduating from ISI, I worked as an actuary (2009-2011) and passed 12 of the 15 required papers for Fellowship 1 in the relatively short span. It was exciting to use statistics to create new financial derivatives, fit yield curves2, and price actuarial products. It was also wonderful to see the immense value and respect that statisticians command in the finance sector. It is this exposure and experience of collaborating with non-statistician domain experts that truly convinced me of the power3 and relevance of statistics in the finance sector, and by extension in today’s world.
While working as an actuary, I felt that in academics I would get the chance to apply and develop statistical methodology for many different domains. Four years of graduate school have been an exciting and rewarding journey in this direction, and have further strengthened my convictions about the wide-ranging importance of statistics in today’s world. I plan to continue this wholehearted pursuit of the application and development of relevant statistical methodology for the rest of my career.
2. [here are slides of my presentation at the 12th Global Conference of Actuaries.]↩
3. [pun intended :)]↩