National Science Foundation

Grace Yang
Program Director for Statistics
Division of Mathematical Sciences
 DMS in a Nutshell

Directorate Division Core Program

BIO Algebra & Number Theory
AST Analysis
CISE
ENG CHE Applied Math
GEO Computational Math
NSF MPS DMS Geometric Analysis/Topology/
SBE Foundations
DMR
EHR Infrastructure
.. PHY Math Biology
. Statistics & Probability
 CDI Seeks Transformative Multidisciplinary
Research Proposals
• Within or across the three thematic areas:

• Extracting Knowledge from Data: comprises of concepts

and techniques for organizing, analyzing, and visualizing
massive data sets. Statisticians do that. Massive data sets
pose challenges.

• Understanding Complexity in Natural, Built, and Social

Systems: deriving fundamental insights on systems
comprising multiple interacting elements of multi scales.
Examples: flow of information across the internet

• Building Virtual Organizations: enhancing discovery and

innovation by bringing people and resources together across
institutional, geographical and cultural boundaries.
• Examples: share data and tools.
 Cyber-enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI)

NSF's five-year bold initiative to create revolutionary

science and engineering research outcomes made
possible by innovations and advances in computational
thinking

Computational thinking is defined comprehensively to

encompass methods, models, algorithms, and tools.

Examples: Statistical methods, Probabilistic models,

data mining, machine learning and the statistics
discipline have much in common. Many tools used are
statistical tools.
Mathematics/statistics plays a prominent role in CDI

Statistical challenges posed by massive data sets

Examples:
1. The np problem in which the number parameters
(p) either grows with the number of observations (n)
or p >> n. Study of random matrices, sparsity.

2. How to draw inference from observational data ?

How to generalize a discovery from a sample to a
population ? modeling of uncertainty.
• 3. Validation procedures. Heterogeneity is challenging.
Homogeneity is not necessarily good. Imaging there is
only one data set to work on. How do we know that is a
valid data set.
• 4. Missing value/ partially observed data. Hidden
Markov process, nonparametric analysis
• 5. Study properties of computing algorithms, rates of
convergence
• 6. Study of manifold data: random shapes, images,
model of skin, etc
 Example

• Emanuel Candes working with doctors on imaging data

• Compressive sampling, use a probabilistic sampling
method and wavelets to reconstruct the original image
with a very few data points. The work used
optimization theory, combinatorics, random matrix
theory.
 CDI initiative

• DMS currently supports seven math science

institutes:
– IMA, IPAM, MSRI
– ARCC (AIM Research Conference Center), IAS,
MBI, SAMSI (resulting from 2001-2002
competition)

• Check out what’s happening at those institutes

– http://www.mathinstitutes.org/
http://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf

Emphasis on bold multidisciplinary

activities that, through computational
thinking

Team up!
Examples
 CAREER Award: Phenomenon of subdiffusion
Conformation fluctuation of biomolecules does not agree with
Brownian diffusion (Samuel Kou, Yale)
 FRG

C. Zhang: New statistical tools for studying brain function Event-

related (efMRI). Goal is to locate specific regions in human brains
when specific tasks are performed. Use nonparametric statistical
method with spatial information over the entire brain.