Dr Desi R. Ivanova

Florence Nightingale Bicentennial Fellow

CDT students (StatML, AIMS, EIT): If you're interested in doing a mini-project with me, please contact me via email.

About Me

I’m a Florence Nightingale Bicentennial Fellow at the Department of Statistics, University of Oxford. Prior to that I was a graduate student on the StatML CDT programme at the University of Oxford, working with Tom Rainforth and Yee Whye Teh.

During my PhD I’ve interned as a Research Scientist at Microsoft Research Cambridge, where I focused on causal machine learning, and at Meta AI (FAIR Labs) NYC, where I worked on neural data compression. Before StatML, I spent four years in quant finance – first in quantitative equity research at UBS and later in cross-asset systematic trading strategies structuring at Goldman Sachs.

Research Interests

I'm broadly interested in probabilistic machine learning. I have worked on Bayesian experimental design, causality and neural data compression. Nowadays I'm mostly interested in robust evaluations of language models ("LLM Evals") and uncertainty quantification for LLMs.

I occasionally blog at Probably Approximately Incorrect.

Contact Details

Email: desi.ivanova<at>stats.ox.ac.uk

Office: 1.17

Matthew Buckland

Mathematics of Random Systems CDT student

About Me

I am a DPhil student on the CDT Mathematics of Random Systems, a program that is jointly run by the University of Oxford and Imperial College London. My research is focused on continuous-time branching processes, and my expected date of completion is October 2024. Before starting my DPhil, I obtained a MMath in Mathematics at the University of Oxford in 2020.

Research Interests

  • Branching processes
  • Lévy processes
  • Interval Partitions
  • Diffusions
  • Continuum random trees
  • Scaling limits

Contact Details

Email: matthew.buckland@stats.ox.ac.uk

Office: 3.05

Research Groups

Supervisor(s)

Dan Phillips

DPhil in Statistics student

About Me

My research focuses on statistical methods to analyse how biomarkers affect the risk of disease (joint modelling of longitudinal and time-to-event data).

I am developing a joint model to understand how Covid-19 antibodies affects the risk of infection after receiving a vaccine.

I graduated from a Masters in Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Oxford in 2020. I then worked as a Statistician on the Covid-19 vaccine trials at the Oxford Vaccine Group, before starting my DPhil in 2021.

Research Interests

  • Joint modelling of longitudinal and time-to-event data
  • Survival analysis
  • Bayesian modelling
  • Multiple imputation

I am interested in developing flexible joint models using which can scale to large datasets. I am also keen to learn more about competing risks, interval censoring, causal inference and spatial statistics.

Please get in touch if you're interested in collaborating, or just want to chat!

Articles

Phillips, D. J. and Christodoulou, M. D. and Feng, S. and Pollard, A. J. and Voysey, M. and Steinsaltz, D. Improved estimates of COVID-19 correlates of protection, antibody decay and vaccine efficacy waning: a joint modelling approach. medRxiv (2024).

Xi Lin

DPhil in Statistics student

About Me

I am a second-year DPhil student supervised by Prof. Robin Evans. My current project aims at developing a robust methodology to combine experimental and observational datasets for better causal inference. Before starting my DPhil, I spent five years working as a consulting actuary in Australia. I specialised in using data analytics and statistical modelling to help public sector clients make better decisions.

Research Interests

Causal Inference

Contact Details

Email: xi.lin@stats.ox.ac.uk

Office: 1.07

Supervisor

Peter Koepernik

DPhil in Statistics student

About Me

I am a 2nd year DPhil student at the Department of Statistics, supervised by Alison Etheridge. My project is on superprocesses, which are measure valued diffusions that can be understood as models for large populations evolving in time and space. Mathematically, they are at the intersection of stochastic analysis, scaling limits of particle systems, and partial differential equations. I have undergraduate degrees in Mathematics, Computer Science, and Physics from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (2020), and a Masters in Mathematics from the University of Oxford (2021). My undergraduate theses were on Noise in the Anderson Model, and on Consistency of Gaussian process regression in metric spaces. My Master's thesis was on a novel proof for the dimension of level sets of superBrownian motion.

Research Interests

  • Superprocesses
  • Scaling limits of particle systems
  • General probability theory and stochastic analysis

Contact Details

Email: peter.koepernik@stats.ox.ac.uk

Office: 3.04

Research Groups

Amitis Shidani

DPhil in Statistics student

About Me

I am a PhD student in the Department of Statistics at the University of Oxford, supervised by Arnaud Doucet and George Deligiannidis. I am broadly interested in Applied Statistics and Machine Learning, both in theory and application. My current research lies in the field of Sequential Decision-Making, particularly Bandit Learning. The general idea behind my research is to apply ideas from optimization, robust statistics, fairness, and causal inference for better real-world decision-making. Prior to joining Oxford, I completed my Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering with a double major in Computer Science at Sharif University of Technology, where I worked with Babak Khalaj on Causal Inference and its application in Computational Genomics. Also, I was a lead data scientist at CafeBazaar, an Iranian Android app-store with more than 40 million users, for almost two years.

Research Interests

  • Sequential Decision-Making
  • Game Theory
  • Optimization
  • Robust Statistics
  • Conformal Prediction

Contact Details

Email: amitis.shidani@stats.ox.ac.uk

Office: G.01

Pronouns: She/Her

Guneet Singh Dhillon

DPhil in Statistics student

About Me

I am currently pursuing a DPhil in Statistics. I am fortunate to be advised by Prof. Arnaud Doucet, Prof. Yee Whye Teh, Prof. George Deligiannidis, and Dr. Tom Rainforth. I am a recipient of the Clarendon Fund Scholarship. 

From 2018-21, I worked as an Applied Scientist II at AWS AI in Pasadena, CA, USA. From 2014-18, I did my B.Sc. in Computer Science with Honors (Turing Scholars Honors) and B.Sc. in Mathematics with Honors from the University of Texas at Austin, TX, USA, with Prof. Adam Klivans as my thesis advisor.

Research Interests

Statistical Machine Learning

Contact Details

Email: guneet.dhillon@stats.ox.ac.uk

Office: G.01

Supervisor

David Geldbach

DPhil in Statistics student

About Me

I am a 3rd year DPhil student in the Department of Statistics specialising on probability. My research is focused on the theoretical analysis of stochastic models. I am especially interested in models that have both continuous and discrete aspects. Before coming to Oxford, I completed by Bachelor (2019) and Master (2021) degrees in Mathematics at LMU Munich. As an undergraduate student, I have spent time at the NUS Singapore and ENS Lyon. Besides mathematics, I enjoy doing lots of sports, currently mostly triathlon and rowing.

Research Interests

  • Probability theory, stochastic processes
  • Random trees, tree valued Markov chains
  • Continuum random trees, scaling limits
  • Interacting particle systems, branching processes
  • Random walks in random environment

Contact Details

Email: david.geldbach@stats.ox.ac.uk

Office: 3.04

Pronouns: He/Him

Research Groups

Yichi Zhang

DPhil in Statistics student

About Me

I am a PhD student majoring in Statistics and a member of the Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance at the University of Oxford, supervised by Professors Mihai Cucuringu, Alex Shestopaloff, and Stefan Zohren. My primary focus is using machine learning and data-driven methods for extracting information from noisy financial datasets. Prior to starting my DPhil programme, I completed a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Statistics and a master’s degree in Industry Engineering and Operational Research from the University of Toronto, which was supervised by Professors John Hull and Chi-guhn Lee. I also worked as a researcher at the Rotman Finhub, Department of Statistics, Department of Economics, and RiskLab, all at the University of Toronto. Moreover, I also secured a position as a researcher at the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences and Centre de recherches mathématiques established at the University of Montreal. In addition to my academic background, I worked as an intern associate of the TD Securities Global Credit Trading Team. Besides this, I also worked as a quantitative analyst on the Manulife Models and Analytics team. That said, I am available for next summer and off-cycle internships within the financial industry.

Research Interests

  • Quantitative finance
  • Machine learning
  • Data science
  • Optimization
  • High-dimensional statistics

Contact Details

Email: yichi.zhang@stats.ox.ac.uk

Office: 1.07

Pronouns: He/Him

Supervisor(s)

Prof Mihai Cucuringu

Alex Shestopaloff

Stefan Zohren

Ruihua (Roxanne) Zhang

DPhil in Statistics student

About Me

I am a DPhil student in the Department of Statistics. I currently work on weak attacks in biological networks, using both theoretical methods and simulations to understand how weak attacks affect key statistics in random networks. Previously, I obtained my MPhil degree in Computational Biology from the University of Cambridge, and my bachelor’s degree in Mathematics with Statistics for Finance from Imperial College London.

Research Interests

  • Networks
  • Computational biology
  • Statistical modelling
  • Applied probability

Contact Details

Email: ruihua.zhang@stats.ox.ac.uk

Office: 2.17

Pronouns: She/Her

DPhil rep for the Graduate Liaison Group

Supervisor

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