People
Joseph Chang
James A. Attwood Professor of Statistics and Data Science; Chairman of the Statistics and Data Science Department
What do you do with Data Science?
My research interests have included a number of areas in probability, statistics, and applications, including random walks, statistical process control, Bayesian inference, evolutionary tree reconstruction, statistical genetics, and autism research. One of the applications has been in illuminating understandings of evolutionary relationships among different species, clarifying capabilities and limitations of phylogenetic methods to reconstruct evolutionary histories using genetic sequences and other data. I have also used mathematical models to study shared ancestry among humans, quantifying how closely related we are to each other and showing how we likely share identical ancestors within the recent several thousand years. Recently, I worked on mathematical models to address problems related to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, developed in real time to support Yale’s response. I also have long standing collaborations with the Yale Child Study Center on autism research that involves a variety of types of data including parental reports, eye tracking, and fMRI.