New paper accepted in Earth Science Reviews (ESR) 1 min read · Thu, Aug 6 2020 Spotlight News extreme weather statistics New paper accepted: Lombardo*, L., Opitz, T., Ardizzone, F., Guzzetti, F., and Huser, R. (2020+), Space-time landslide predictive modelling, Earth Science Reviews, to appear [PDF preprint]
A sharper view of flood risk 1 min read · Sun, Jun 7 2020 News extreme events climate science statistics Extreme weather patterns and regions at risk of flooding could be easier to spot using a new statistical model for large spatial datasets.
New paper accepted in Bayesian Analysis 1 min read · Mon, May 25 2020 Spotlight News statistics Bayesian Statistics New paper accepted: Hrafnkelsson, B., Siegert, S., Huser, R., Bakka, H., and Jóhannesson, Á. V. (2020+), Max-and-Smooth: a two-step approach for approximate Bayesian inference in latent Gaussian models, Bayesian Analysis, to appear [ arXiv].
KAUST startup Edama Organic Solutions has been featured in Arab News 1 min read · Tue, Apr 21 2020 News Edama Throughout the world, organic waste generation is posing serious challenges, threatening food security and water purity and availability. Saudi Arabia is no exception.
A hierarchical max-infinitely divisible spatial model for extreme precipitation 1 min read · Mon, Mar 23 2020 News Spatial extremes Max-infinitely New paper accepted: Bopp, G., Shaby, B., and Huser, R. (2020+), A hierarchical max-infinitely divisible spatial model for extreme precipitation, Journal of the American Statistical Association .
Prof. Raphaël Huser now serving as AE for the journal Environmetrics 1 min read · Mon, Mar 16 2020 Spotlight News statistics Spatial extremes Prof. Raphaël Huser has been appointed to serve as an Associate Editor for Environmetrics, the Journal of The International Environmetrics Society ( TIES), starting on March 16, 2020.
Prof. Raphaël Huser now serving as AE for the Journal of the Korean Statistical Society 1 min read · Fri, Jan 3 2020 Spotlight News extSTAT Research Group Prof. Raphaël Huser has been appointed to serve as an Associated Editor for the Journal of the Korean Statistical Society ( JKSS) starting on January 1, 2020.
A second wind for turbine design 1 min read · Sun, Dec 8 2019 News renewable energy wind energy statistics Better prediction of extreme winds at sparsely observed locations could help optimize the design of wind farms.
Shaking up the landslide model 1 min read · Thu, Oct 24 2019 News disaster management Environmental Statistics statistics Areas without earthquake monitoring systems could model the tremors by using data from local landslides.
3 Faculty Positions in Statistics 2020 at KAUST 1 min read · Tue, Oct 1 2019 News statistics The 3 faculty positions are in the Statistics Program (http://stat.kaust.edu.sa) within the Computer, Electrical, and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering Division. Currently, the Statistics Program has 7 core faculty and 10 affiliated faculty. We are primarily interested in applicants with strong background in one of the following areas: (1) Statistical Data Science and AI, including network data analysis and high-dimensional statistics (https://apply.interfolio.com/69165); (2) Statistical Climatology, with expertise in statistical analysis of climate model output data, in particular regional climate models, and in physical systems (https://apply.interfolio.com/69167); (3) Statistics for Public Health, including smart health data analysis, personalized medicine, and disease mapping (https://apply.interfolio.com/69168).
Expanding the scale of dangerous weather prediction 1 min read · Sun, Sep 29 2019 News Environmental Statistics A more accurate and efficient method of capturing the local factors that lead to extreme rainfall enables better flood prediction across larger regions.
KAUST Assistant Professor Raphaël Huser receives American Statistical Association award 1 min read · Tue, Sep 3 2019 News Statistics of extremes spatio-temporal statistics copulas KAUST Assistant Professor Raphaël Huser recently received the American Statistical Association's (ASA) 2019 Section on Statistics and the Environment (ENVR) Early Investigator Award for his outstanding contributions to environmental statistics. He accepted the award at the 2019 Joint Statistical Meetings held in Denver, Colorado, U.S., from July 27 to August 1.
Congratulations to Daniela for her new position as Lecturer in Statistics at the University of Glasgow 1 min read · Mon, Aug 19 2019 News Spotlight
New paper accepted in JCGS 1 min read · Wed, Jul 17 2019 News Statistics of extremes New accepted paper: Vettori, S., Huser, R., Segers, J., and Genton, M. G. (2019+), Bayesian model averaging over tree-based dependence structures for multivariate extremes, Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, to appear.
Local likelihood estimation of complex tail dependence structures, applied to U.S. precipitation extremes 1 min read · Thu, Jul 4 2019 News Spatial extremes New accepted paper: Castro Camilo, D., and Huser, R. (2019+), Local likelihood estimation of complex tail dependence structures, applied to U.S. precipitation extremes, Journal of the American Statistical Association, to appear.
New paper accepted in JGR - Earth Surface 1 min read · Tue, Jun 25 2019 Spotlight News Statistics of extremes Bayesian Statistics New accepted paper: Lombardo, L., Bakka, H., Tanyas, H., van Westen, C., Mai, P. M., and Huser, R. (2019+), Geostatistical modeling to capture seismic-shaking patterns from earthquake-induced landslides, Journal of Geophysical Research-Earth Surface [ PDF preprint]
New paper accepted in JABES 1 min read · Tue, Jun 25 2019 Spotlight News extreme weather spatio-temporal statistics Statistics of extremes New accepted paper: Castro-Camilo, D., Huser, R., and Rue, H. (2019+), A spliced Gamma-generalized Pareto model for short-term extreme wind speed probabilistic forecasting, Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics, to appear [ PDF preprint]
Prof. Raphaël Huser now serving as AE of Econometrics and Statistics 1 min read · Thu, May 2 2019 Spotlight News Spatial extremes statistics Statistics of extremes Prof. Raphaël Huser has been appointed to serve as an Associate Editor for the Econometrics and Statistics ( EcoSta) part B (Statistics) starting from May 2019.
Prof. Birgir Hrafnkelsson visits the extSTAT group 1 min read · Sat, Feb 23 2019 News statistics Professor Birgir Hrafnkelsson from the Department of Mathematics at the University of Iceland, will visit extSTAT during February 24-March 2, 2019. His research interests include Bayesian hierarchical modeling, spatial statistics, spatio-temporal modeling, extreme value analysis and statistical modeling of environmental data.
Advanced Spatial Modeling with Stochastic Partial Differential Equations Using R and INLA book 1 min read · Tue, Feb 19 2019 News INLA statistics xstat research highlights Modeling spatial and spatio-temporal continuous processes is an important and challenging problem in spatial statistics. Advanced Spatial Modeling with Stochastic Partial Differential Equations Using R and INLA describes in detail the stochastic partial differential equations (SPDE) approach for modeling continuous spatial processes with a Matérn covariance, which has been implemented using the integrated nested Laplace approximation (INLA) in the R-INLA package. Key concepts about modeling spatial processes and the SPDE approach are explained with examples using simulated data and real
Raphaël Huser’s article among the top downloaded articles in Springer’s Environmental Sciences Journals 1 min read · Tue, Jan 22 2019 News INLA statistics xstat research highlights Luigi Lombardo, Thomas Opitz, and Raphaël Huser’s article “Point process-based modeling of multiple debris flow landslides using INLA: an application to the 2009 Messina disaster”, published in the scientific journal Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment (SERRA), in July 2018, is among the top downloaded articles in Springer’s Environmental Sciences Journals for the year 2018. Huser is an Assistant Professor of statistics in the CEMSE division and principal investigator of the Extreme Statistics (extSTAT) Research Group at KAUST.
Prof. Raphaël Huser appointed to serve as AE for JABES 1 min read · Tue, Jan 1 2019 Spotlight News statistics Prof. Raphaël Huser has been appointed to serve as an Associate Editor for the Springer Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics ( JABES, 2017 Impact Factor: 1.072) starting from January 2019 . JABES publishes papers that introduce new statistical methods to solve practical problems in the agricultural sciences, the biological sciences, and the environmental sciences.
Students Peng Zhong and Rustam Bekishev get their MS degree 1 min read · Fri, Dec 14 2018 News statistics On December 14, 2018, KAUST welcomed 243 graduates at the University’s ninth Commencement ceremony. Among them, students Rustam Bekishev and Peng Zhong, who is now a Ph.D. student In Statistics in our group, got their MS degree. Congratulations!
2018 Workshop on Statistics and Data Science 1 min read · Sat, Nov 10 2018 News statistics data analysis The Statistics Program at KAUST is proud to host the 2018 Workshop on Statistics and Data Science. This workshop gathers the leading experts on statistical data science to discuss the current needs, challenges and opportunities of modeling massive and high dimensional data, predicting complex biological and physical processes. The workshop will run from November 12-14. Talks and posters presentations will take place in Auditorium 0215 (between Buildings 4 & 5). Details on the workshop (speakers, abstracts and schedule) can be found here.
How extreme weather exacerbates air pollution 1 min read · Tue, Sep 4 2018 News statistics extreme weather air pollution xstat research highlights Simultaneously modeling of air pollutants and weather under extreme conditions highlights the potential for serious health risks.
Point patterns help to predict landslides 1 min read · Sun, May 20 2018 News computing earth science statistics Environmental Statistics Rainfall simulations in statistical models could allow accurate prediction of dangerous landslides.
Students shine on the statistics stage 1 min read · Mon, Apr 2 2018 News Spotlight Statistics of extremes Environmental Statistics spatial statistics KAUST Ph.D. alumna Sabrina Vettori and Ph.D. student Yuxiao Li have been selected by the Eastern North American Region (ENAR) of the International Biometric Society to receive a Distinguished Student Paper Award at the 2018 ENAR Spring Meeting.
Challenging statistics of weather extremes 1 min read · Sun, Feb 25 2018 News statistics climate science weather More accurate statistical modeling of extreme weather will improve forecasting and disaster mitigation.
Best 2016 Paper in the Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics 1 min read · Mon, Jan 15 2018 Spotlight News statistics spatial statistics Spatial extremes Professor Huser will present the work in a special invited session (JABES showcase) at the International Biometric Conference taking place in Barcelona, Spain, in July 2018.
PhD student Sabrina Vettori selected for an ENAR Distinguished Student Paper Award. Congrats! 1 min read · Tue, Dec 5 2017 News Spotlight statistics air pollution PhD student Sabrina Vettori has been selected by the International Biometric Society Eastern North American Region (ENAR) to receive a Distinguished Student Paper Award at the 2018 ENAR Spring Meeting in Atlanta ( https://www.enar.org/meetings/spring2018/index.cfm ) for her manuscript entitled " Bayesian Hierarchical Modelling of Air Pollution Extremes Using Multivariate Max-Stable Processes ". She will present her work at an oral contributed paper session, be invited to attend the ENAR President’s reception and publicly receive their award at the beginning of the ENAR President’s Invited
2017 Workshop Modern Statistics for Complex Data Structures 1 min read · Sun, Nov 12 2017 Spotlight News statistics 2017 Workshop Modern Statistics for Complex Data Structures
Congratulations to Sabrina for successfully defending her PhD thesis 1 min read · Sun, Oct 22 2017 News
KAUST Ph.D. student wins American Statistical Association paper competition 1 min read · Thu, Sep 14 2017 Awards News Spotlight student award Sabrina Vettori, a Ph.D. student co-supervised by KAUST Distinguished Professor Marc Genton, who leads the Spatio-Temporal Statistics & Data Science group, and KAUST Assistant Professor Raphaël Huser, who leads the Extreme Statistics Research Group, won the 2017 Student Paper Competition sponsored by the Section on Statistics and the Environment (ENVR) of the American Statistical Association (ASA). Eligible papers focused on environmental statistics, and the four competition winners presented their papers at an ENVR-sponsored session at the 2017 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM), held from
Letting the data speak for itself 1 min read · Sun, Sep 3 2017 News statistics climate science extreme events A new statistical approach for environmental measurements lets the data determine how to model extreme events.
A talk with PhD student Sabrina Vettori: Catastrophic events are forecastable, after all! 1 min read · Mon, May 15 2017 News Statistics of extremes Environmental Statistics spatial statistics Environmental disasters occur daily and hit almost every country around the world, taking a heavy toll on lives and economies. According to the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, every year there are around 350 reported disasters causing more than 20,000 deaths and affecting the life of almost 100 million people with an overall economic damage of 66.5 billion US$. But this can change.
PhD student Sabrina Vettori selected for an ENVR Student Paper Award. Congrats! 1 min read · Sun, Dec 18 2016 News Spotlight Spatial extremes extreme-value theory PhD student Sabrina Vettori has been selected to receive a Best Student Paper Award from the Section on Statistics and the Environment (ENVR) of the American Statistical Association (ASA) for her manuscript entitled "Bayesian clustering and dimension reduction in air pollutant multivariate extremes".
Prof. Raphaël Huser is an Elected Member of ISI 1 min read · Fri, Dec 16 2016 Spotlight News Statistics of extremes
CEMSE Big Data Open Day shows off fascinating discoveries 1 min read · Thu, Dec 8 2016 News big data machine learning knowledge discovery supercomputing The fifth-anniversary event marked CEMSE's biggest successes and featured 20 KAUST discoveries, with more than 1,000 visitors from the community attending the event."Big data has many applications: to understand medicine better; to manage food supplies, and to connect objects. Data is at the center of everything," said Dean Mootaz Elnozahy of the University's Computer, Electrical, Mathematical Science and Engineering (CEMSE) Division at the CEMSE Big Data Open Day held on December 4, 2016.
Prof. Benjamin Shaby (Penn State University, USA) visits extSTAT 1 min read · Sun, Nov 20 2016 Spotlight News Spatial extremes extreme-value theory Statistics of extremes Prof. Ben Shaby is an Assistant Professor in the Statistics Department and the Institute for CyberScience at Penn State, where he started in 2013. Before that, he was a postdoc with Cari Kaufman at UC Berkeley. Previous stop was in Durham at the Statistics and Applied Mathematical Institute (SAMSI) and Duke University. He did his Ph.D. work in Statistics at Cornell University with David Ruppert and Marty Wells. Before starting at Cornell, he spent his undergrad years at Stanford (go Cardinal!). He then spent two great years working for Chris Field at the Carnegie Institution's Department of
2016 Workshop Statistics for High-Dimensional & Complex Data 1 min read · Mon, Oct 31 2016 News statistics Workshop on Statistics for High-Dimensional and Complex Data, Nov. 6-9, 2016 Organizers : Prof. Marc G. Genton, Chair of Spatio-Temporal Statistics and Data Science Group Prof. Raphael Huser, Chair of Extreme Statistics Group Prof. Ying Sun, Chair of Environmental Statistics Group Confirmed speakers: Prof. David Bolin, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden Prof. Probal Chaudhuri, Indian Statistical Institute, India Prof. Dan Cooley, Colorado State University, USA Prof. Subhajit Dutta, IIT Kanpur, India Prof. Amanda Hering, Baylor University, USA Dr. Anna Kiriliouk, Université
Prof. Miguel de Carvalho and Rodrigo Rubio (PUC, Chile) visit extSTAT 1 min read · Fri, Jul 15 2016 News Statistics of extremes Prof. Miguel Carvalho holds a research and teaching positions at PUC Chile, EPFL, Banco de Portugal, and UNL. He is an applied mathematical statistician with a variety of research interests including, inter alia, statistical inferences for small-probability events, geometrical statistics, methods for data visualization and graphical learning, econometrics, and medical diagnostic assessment.
Getting a handle on extremes 1 min read · Sat, Jun 18 2016 News statistics applied mathematics By tapping into the power of extreme value theory, an international team of researchers including Raphaël Huser from the University's Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering Division has developed a statistical model that overcomes the shortcomings of previous schemes to provide a reliable basis for climate research and the prediction of drought and flood. The model can accurately describe observed rainfall data and reliably predict the likelihood of future extreme events. The analysis of hourly or daily rainfall data presents many challenges for researchers and
Postdoc Luigi Lombardo gets an Outstanding Student Poster and PICO EGU Award. Congratulations Luigi! 1 min read · Tue, May 24 2016 Spotlight News statistics landslide susceptibility modeling The 2016 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to Luigi Lombardo for the poster/PICO entitled Landslide triggering-thickness susceptibility, a simple proxy for landslide hazard? A test in the Mili catchment (North-Eastern Sicily, Italy). Regarding his work, Luigi said: " In the PICO presentation project we modeled the thickness at the crown of each landslide as the dependent variable. As a result, the predictive maps carried more information than classic susceptibility ones, enabling a better proxy to hazard prediction." You can find Luigi's poster here.
Dr. Sebastian Engelke (EPFL) visits extSTAT 1 min read · Thu, Dec 17 2015 Spotlight News Spatial extremes extreme-value theory Sebastian is an Ambizione fellow at EPF Lausanne with Anthony Davison. Sebastian did his studies in Mathematics at University of Göttingen and UC Berkeley, and he finished his PhD as a Deutsche Telekom Foundation fellow in 2013 at the University of Göttingen with Martin Schlather. His research interests are in extreme value theory, spatial statistics, graphical models and data science.
2015 Workshop on Computational Space-Time Statistics 1 min read · Sun, Oct 4 2015 Spotlight News statistics spatio-temporal statistics Bayesian computational statistics Organizers : Prof. Marc G. Genton , Chair of Spatio-Temporal Statistics and Data Science Group Prof. Raphael Huser, Chair of Extreme Statistics Group Prof. Ying Sun, Chair of Environmental Statistics Group Confirmed speakers: Prof. Sudipto Banerjee, University of California Los Angeles, USA Prof. Souhaib Ben Taieb, Monash University, Australia Prof. Stefano Castruccio, Newcastle University, UK Prof. Miguel de Carvalho, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Chile Prof. Clément Dombry, University of Franche-Comté , France Prof. Xuming He, University of Michigan, USA Prof. Hsin-Cheng Huang
Prof. Raphaël Huser wins the Lambert Award 2015 1 min read · Tue, Aug 25 2015 Spotlight News extreme weather Statistics of extremes extreme-value theory The Swiss Statistical Society (SSS) has established since 2013 the Johann Heinrich Lambert Award to recognize the work of young statisticians. The Lambert Award consists of a certificate and 1'000 Swiss Francs. It entitles to a plenary talk at the `Swiss Statistics Meeting'.
The Lambert Award for Young Statisticians Goes To Raphael Huser 1 min read · Tue, Aug 25 2015 Spotlight News Statistics of extremes spatio-temporal statistics copulas Today Raphael Huser, Assistant Professor at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), received the Lambert Award for Young Statisticians for his contribution in modeling the distribution of extreme weather events.
Dr. Raphaël Huser wins the EPFL Doctorate award 2014 1 min read · Fri, Oct 3 2014 Spotlight News Risk assessment for extremes of natural phenomena has become increasingly important, and over the past few years the scientific community has realized the importance of considering the spatial or spatio-temporal extent of extreme events. The extreme-value distributions play an important role in the statistical modeling of extremes at individual locations, but for risk assessment it is crucial to assess dependence between extremes at locations: if dependence is strong, rare events might occur simultaneously at many different locations, thereby increasing the overall risk. In this thesis, new
