About Me

I'm an Associate Professor and the current Department Chair at the Department of Statistics, Indiana University. Until 2013 I've been a Post-Doctoral Associate at the Department of Statistical Science and the Social Science Research Institute (SSRI) at Duke University, where I worked with Jerry Reiter. I obtained my Ph.D. in Statistics in 2010 from the Department of Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University, under the supervision of Stephen Fienberg. My interests have always been diverse, but have converged in a very natural way into statistics. My original undergraduate training was in electrical engineering, after which I enrolled in a graduate program in philosophy of science. For several years I worked in information systems projects. It was one of these projects, documenting human rights abuses with the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which eventually brought me into the field of statistics.

Research

My research interests fall into the broad category of development of models and inferential methods for analyzing complex multivariate data. I have a long standing interest in problems that involve Bayesian analysis of multivariate discrete data, including modeling and computational issues, and applications to social science, public policy and human rights. Some of my specific areas of interest include: Latent structure models, Mixed membership models, Bayesian non parametric models, truncated contingency tables, missing data formulations, MCMC algorithms for Bayesian posterior inference, and multiple-recapture methods.

Education

  • Ph.D. Statistics, Carnegie Mellon University, 2010
  • M.Sc. Statistics, Carnegie Mellon University, 2006
  • B.Sc. Electrical Engineering (electronics), Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, 1996