New Faculty Spotlight: Hyebin Song
The Department of Statistics in the Eberly College of Science is proud to welcome Hyebin Song as assistant professor of statistics beginning in the fall 2020 semester.
Song graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a PhD in statistics. Prior to that, she received a BA in Applied Statistics from Yonsei University, South Korea and worked as a statistician at the Bank of Korea.
Song is interested in developing statistical methods to overcome statistical and computational challenges in modern datasets, which are often high-dimensional, large-scale, with missing entries, and ill-conditioned. “I believe interpretability is an important characteristic of a model,” said Song. “I am motivated to develop interpretable models which can help uncover hidden structures in datasets and lead to new scientific discoveries.” Song is also very passionate about interdisciplinary work, especially with biological data--such as protein or gene data--which are complex and high-dimensional in nature.
What motivates Song about her work is knowing that data will continue to grow in scale and complexity, and that in the search for new knowledge, statistics will continue to be an indispensable tool. “I think the work that we do as statisticians really matters in the search for new scientific discoveries, and this is a great motivator for me,” explained Song.
Song said she chose Penn State for two main reasons: the chance to interact with truly great researchers in the department, and interdisciplinary work, which she believes to be greatly valued at Penn State.
When she’s not focusing on her work, Song likes to do yoga, read books, and watch nature videos. She is also trying to re-learn piano after not playing for a long time and she is enjoying every minute of it.
Join us in wishing Hyebin Song a successful first semester in the Department of Statistics!