Hyungsuk Tak

Assistant Professor and ICDS Co-Hire
Hyungsuk Tak
Hyungsuk
Tak
Assistant Professor and ICDS Co-Hire
Department Affiliations
Interests
Astrostatistics
Bayesian Inference
Computational Statistics
Address
Phone
814-865-3791
Website
Personal Site

Biography

Hyungsuk (Tak) Tak is an Assistant Professor of Statistics, Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State.

Dr. Tak received his Ph.D. in Statistics from Harvard University in 2016. He received his A.M. in Statistics from Harvard University in 2012, and a B.A. in Statistics from Korea University in 2009.

As an astro-statistician, I develop practically motivated data-analytic tools to address statistical challenges in the analysis of astronomical data. Specifically, I am actively working on time-delay cosmography to infer the current expansion rate of the Universe, known as the Hubble constant. My research also involves tackling statistical challenges in modeling the stochastic variability of irregularly spaced time series data via continuous-time autoregressive moving average (CARMA) processes and developing Markov chain Monte Carlo methods to better explore multimodal parameter spaces. Additionally, I am interested in reverberation-mapping lag estimation using recurrent neural network models, measurement-error astronomy, and outlier-robust inference.

 

Honors and Awards

Derek C. Bok Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching of Undergraduates, 2016.

 

Selected Publications

  • H. Tak and X. Ding (2024), "A Robust Bayesian Meta-Analysis for Estimating the Hubble Constant via Time Delay Cosmography", Annals of Applied Statistics, 18 (4), 3297-3317.
  • A. Meyer, D. A. van Dyk, H. Tak, A. Siemiginowska (2023), "TD-CARMA: Painless, Accurate, and Scalable Estimates of Gravitational Lens Time Delays with Flexible CARMA Processes", The Astrophysical Journal, 950 (1), 37-56.
  • Z. Hu and H. Tak (2020), "Modeling Stochastic Variability in  Multi-Band Time Series Data'', The Astronomical Journal, 160 (6), 265-276.
  • H. Tak, X.-L. Meng, and D. A. van Dyk (2018), "A Repelling-Attracting Metropolis Algorithm for Multimodality," Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, 27 (3), 479-490.

  • H. Tak, K. Mandel, D. A. van Dyk, V. L. Kashyap, X.-L. Meng, and A. Siemiginowska (2017), "Bayesian Estimates of Astronomical Time Delays between Gravitationally Lensed Stochastic Light Curves," The Annals of Applied Statistics, 11 (3), 1309-1348.

     

Teaching

  • Stat 512 - Design and Analysis of Experiments
  • Stat 540 - Statistical Computing
  • Astro 415 - Introduction to Astrostatistics
  • Stat 414/Math 414 - Introduction to Probability Theory

  • Stat 415/Math 415 - Introduction to Mathematical Statistics

     

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