UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Hyun Bin Kang, a doctoral student in statistics at Penn State, has been awarded the Academic Computing Fellowship. The fellowship is offered through a partnership between the Graduate School and Penn State Information Technology Services. It was established in 1987.
The Academic Computing Fellowship Program supports research doctorate students who have a background and strong interest in computing applications within their disciplines. Through support provided by the fellowship and the use of computing resources, students develop and disseminate new methods for problem solving within their disciplines.
Bin Kang is conducting research that focuses on functional data analysis, which is a statistical discipline concerned with complex smooth data structures such as functions and images. Bin Kang’s work involves Manifold Functional Data Analysis (MFDA), a new paradigm that is part of a movement called next generation functional data.
Bin Kang has noted that “the development of MFDA arose from a Penn State anthropology department study that focuses on revealing how variation in human facial shape is dependent on genetic ancestry and individual genes.”
Bin Kang has also been praised for her meticulous attention to computational efficiency as she applies functional data tools to 3D facial images.
One nominator wrote, “this is a completely new territory for functional data methods, and she has had to draw on a number of other areas, including spatial statistics and manifold learning, in order to apply these tools. She has gone out on her own, finding new methods and integrating them into our work.”
Bin Kang was honored during the inaugural Graduate Student Awards Luncheon held on April 27 at the Nittany Lion Inn.