Murali Haran pronunciation


Office : 421B Thomas
Mail : 326 Thomas Building, University Park, PA 16802.
Phone: 814-863-8126
email: m(followed by my last name all in lower case)@stat.psu.edu



I am an associate professor of statistics at Pennsylvania State University. I received my Ph.D. from the School of Statistics at the University of Minnesota and a B.S. in Computer Science (with minors in Statistics, Mathematics and Film) from Carnegie Mellon University. I was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Statistical Sciences (courtesy appointment at Duke University) (2003--2004) and a New Research Fellow at the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute (SAMSI) program (2009--2010) on space-time analysis. I spent my sabbatical (2011--2012) at the Department of Statistics, University of Washington, Seattle. I provide below a summary of my research, teaching and advising/service.

Research
My research interests include statistical computing (Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms) and models for spatial data and computer experiments (primarily involving Gaussian random fields and Bayesian hierarchical models), with applications to problems in climate science, disease modeling, ecology and epidemiology. I have also worked on statistical techniques called random forests for applications in software engineering research. For more, please see: background and more on my research.

Select recent papers (link to longer list: publications )

Teaching

Other Roles
  • Penn State
    • I organize the working group on Stochastic Modeling and Computing:
    • Chair of the undergraduate program at Penn State Statistics.
    • I am one of the graduate academic advisers (I advise incoming Ph.D. students to the Department of Statistics).
    • Dissertation (thesis) adviser to several students at Penn State Statistics. For a list of current and past students click here.
    • Schreyer Honors College adviser for Statistics. This role includes advising students who want to do a senior honors thesis.
    • Chair of the faculty search committee
    • Member of cyberscience cluster hire committee (3 colleges across Penn State).
  • Statistics Profession
    • I am an associate editor for the Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics , and Bayesian Analysis and past associate editor for Biometrics
    • I have served/am serving as guest editor for special issues of the Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics and Statistical Methodology.
    • Editorial Management Committee member for the Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics (JABES).
    • As of January 2013 I am the chair of the American Statistical Association's Section on Risk Analysis; I was chair-elect in 2012.
    • I have been a member of the American Statistical Association's Advisory Committee on Climate Change Policy since 2009.
    • I co-organized the Workshop on Environmetrics (ENVR 2012) , which was held at North Carolina State University from October 4-6, 2012. There was an invited program featuring a number of leading researchers, two half-day tutorials on spatial modeling and extremes, and a poster session.

Everything Else (non-academic)