Hello, welcome to my website! I am a third year PhD student in the Department of Statistics at the University of Michigan, and am being advised by Kerby Shedden. I am interested in developing statistical tools which can be readily applied by scientists to account for the structure of their problem of interest. These tools need to be fast and interpretable to be useful, so my work considers computational and statistical tradeoffs. Most of my work has been with applications in biology, but I am interested in working in other sciences as well.
Research interests
- Weighted low rank approximation in reduced rank regression
- Computational and statistical efficiency tradeoffs
- Hypothesis testing in changepoint detection problems
Education
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Michigan
Ph.D. Statistics | expected May 2029
Ph.D. advisor: Kerby Shedden
Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas
M.S. Statistics | May 2024
Master’s report: Fully Bayesian endogenous variable estimation with many instrumental variables.
Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois
B.S. Mathematics | May 2022
Publications
- Hayes, D. T., Tawidian, P., Schubert, E., Kang, Q., Sumpter, A. J., & Michel, K. (2025). Larvicidal activity of Trichoderma atroviride (Hypocreales: Hypocreaceae) against Aedes albopictus (Diptera: Culicidae). Journal of Medical Entomology, 62(5), 1253-1264
Awards
University of Michigan
Graduate Student Instructor Excellence in Teaching, Team Award | May 2026
- Awarded as part of an instructional team for STATS 413 with Gabriel Durham, Luke Francisco, Jacob Trauger, and Xinhe Wang
Graduate Student Instructor Excellence in Teaching, Team Award | May 2025
- Awarded as part of an instructional team for STATS 485 with Abhiti Mishra and Xinhe Wang
Wheaton College
Award for Excellence in Applied Mathematics | May 2022
- Awarded to one or two graduating applied mathematics students each year
Work experience
Graduate Research Assistant, Kansas State University | Jan 2023 - May 2024
- Worked in the statistics department’s consulting laboratory providing services to agricultural, biological, and environmental sciences researchers in the design and analysis of experiments
Business Intelligence Intern, Resultant | May 2022 - May 2024
- Worked on a database development project for the Judicial Council of California’s Judicial Branch Statistical Information System (JBSIS). Built out warehouse pipelines to automate processing court records to monthly reports, and created visualizations to highlight key trends
Teaching experience
University of Michigan Graduate Student Instructor
STATS 600, Regression Analysis | Fall 2026
STATS 413, Applied Regression Analysis | Winter 2025
STATS 413, Applied Regression Analysis | Fall 2025
STATS 485, Capstone Seminar | Winter 2024
STATS 250, Introduction to Statistics and Data Analysis | Fall 2024
Kansas State University Graduate Teaching Assistant
STAT 325, Introduction to Statistics | Fall 2022