ORFE graduate students Rajita Chandak, Will Underwood, and Maxine Yu received the SEAS Award for Excellence. This honorific award recognizes advanced graduate students who have performed at the highest level as scholars and researchers.  

Rajita, currently advised by Professor Matias Cattaneo, works on establishing consistency results and developing inference methodologies for modern machine learning tools.  Will’s research interests are in statistical theory and applied probability.  He is currently focusing on nonparametric estimation for networks, coupling and strong approximation techniques for statistical inference, and theory of random forest procedures. Will is also advised by Prof. Cattaneo.  Maxine Yu is advised by Professor Jianqing Fan.  Her research interests lie broadly in the interface of statistical learning and decision making, with focus on high-dimensional inference, reinforcement learning, dynamic pricing, item ranking, factor analysis, and robust statistics.