PIPages
Labs

Ting Zhang

University of Georgia, GA·Mathematics & Statistics

Many kinds of data are collected over time: stock prices for thousands of companies, brain scans, phone usage across millions of users, power-grid readings and climate records. Analysts want to know two things about such data.

Fields

Mathematics & Statistics

Computer Science

Topics

change-point detection

change point analysis

irregular signals

Grants
2 known grants, through Aug 2029

What they work on

  1. Develop change-point tests that stay powerful when the post-change signal varies unpredictably, using a causal representation framework and Gaussian approximation to set statistically sound alarm thresholds.
  2. Extend detection of irregular changes from offline analysis to online sequential monitoring, for settings both with and without stable historical data, with theoretical guarantees for dependent, noisy data.
  3. Characterize analytically how the uncertainty of self-normalized statistics accumulates as the number of variables in a time series grows, using tools from harmonic analysis.
  4. Build self-normalized methods for high-dimensional time series, including feature selection, simultaneous uncertainty quantification, and inference for medians, quantiles, variances and autocovariances.

More about the research

When does something suddenly change? And how sure can we be about patterns in data with huge numbers of variables, where each measurement depends on earlier ones? Many standard statistical tools assume that the data points are independent of each other, or that a change takes a simple, predictable form. Two projects develop new statistical methods, with mathematical guarantees, for data that break these assumptions.

Why it matters

Reliable alarms for sudden, unpredictable changes could help detect power-grid disruptions, attacks on sensor networks and shifts in social networks. Such alarms could also be harder to fool with deliberately designed adversarial inputs. Valid error estimates for large, time-dependent datasets could support sounder conclusions in economics, finance, neuroscience brain imaging, telecommunications and climate science.

Known grants

From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.

Collaborative Research: Change Point Testing and Estimation with Irregular Signals

NSF · Sep 2026 – Aug 2029

Self-Normalized Inference for High-Dimensional Time Series

NSF · Aug 2024 – Jul 2027

Closest labs

Benjamin Boniece

Drexel University, PA·Mathematics & Statistics

Develop methods to detect shocks that affect many series in high-dimensional, high-frequency data, possibly asynchronously, using time-localized principal component analysis in factor-structured models.

Yao Zheng

University of Connecticut, CT·Mathematics & Statistics·Early-career

Develop recurrent neural network (RNN) models for high-dimensional time series that stay interpretable through Granger causality, a test of whether one series predicts another, to balance accuracy and interpretability.

Yinqiu He

University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Mathematics & Statistics

Develop methods with theoretical guarantees for estimating low-dimensional network embeddings and quantifying their uncertainty under general network models with relaxed assumptions.

The school

University of Georgia: 27 labs on PI Pages, $628M a year on research, 598 research doctorates a year.

More about University of Georgia

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