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Welcome to David van Dyk's web site photo: dvd

RESEARCH INTERESTS:

David van Dyk's scholarly work focuses on methodological and computational issues involved with Bayesian analysis of highly structured statistical models and emphasizes serious interdisciplinary research, especially in astronomy. He is particularly interested in improving the efficiency of computationally intensive methods involving data augmentation, such as EM-type algorithms and various Markov chain Monte Carlo methods.

Professor van Dyk's primary area of interdisciplinary work is Astro-statistics; he coordinates the California-Harvard AstroStatistics Collaboration (CHASC). This group includes Astronomers and Statisticians and provides an open forum for discussing statistical issues that arise in astrophysical research. CHASC's current work focuses on constructing and fitting highly structured models for data obtained with the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

INTRODUCTORY READING:

A good place to read about the basics of Professor van Dyk's work on efficient statistical computation is his recent review paper on EM-type and Data Augmentation algorithms, jointly authored with Xiao-Li Meng (Download pdf).

If you are interested in his work on statistical methods in astronomy, you might want to read the CHASC paper on the analysis of high-resolution high-energy astrophysical spectra and images (Download pdf) or a recent paper on the analysis of stellar evolution using color magnitude diagrams (Download pdf).