Presenter

Douglas Nychka is a Professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics at Colorado School of Mines, where he focuses on modernizing the curriculum in statistics and making it seamless with the emerging area of data science. Nychka holds an appointment at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) as an emeritus scientist, where he served as Director of the Institute for Mathematics Applied to Geosciences (IMAGe) 2004-2017. He was a mathematics/physics undergraduate at Duke University before receiving a PhD in statistics from the University of Wisconsin. His task at IMAGe was to enrich the scientific and educational activity at NCAR through mathematical methods and models. He also used the large scientific projects at NCAR to engage the mathematical science communities in new applications and to motivate new mathematics and statistics. Some of Nychka's current research interests are nonparametric regression (mostly splines), statistical computing, spatial statistics and spatial designs.