UCF Students Awarded at American Statistical Association Florida Chapter Meeting 

Five Knights receive distinction at statewide meeting hosted by UCF 

By Emily Dougherty | February 26th, 2025

For a group of UCF students, the American Statistical Association (ASA) Florida Chapter Meeting 2025 was more than just an academic conference—it was a moment of recognition, collaboration, and celebration. 

Five College of Sciences statistics and data science students won the Student Presentation Award, an achievement that recognizes their remarkable research efforts. 

UCF hosted this year’s annual event, bringing together 80 attendees from across the state with several guests from outside of Florida for a weekend of learning and networking. Hsin-Hsiung Huang, assistant professor of statistics and data science and assistant professor of statistics and data science. Suyeon Kang, assistant professor in the Department of Statistics and Data Science, organized this year’s meeting on behalf of the College of Sciences. 

The meeting featured experts in the field, including statistician, financial econometrician, and data scientist, Jianqing Fan, professor of statistics and machine learning at Princeton University.  

The winning Knights presented a range of topics. Big data analytics doctoral student, Berkin Uluutku, presented his research on medical technology advancements at the meeting.  

“My presentation focused on improving advanced PET scan techniques and 3D image reconstruction methods to get better quality medical images,” Uluutku says. “The work focused on developing new mathematical methods that can help doctors get clearer, more detailed pictures of what’s happening inside a patient’s body. This is particularly important for diagnosing and monitoring conditions like cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, where seeing subtle changes in the brain or body can make a big difference in treatment.” 

Joshua White, a big data analytics doctoral student, also presented his research on early onset Alzheimer’s detection.  

“I presented our research on Convolutional Sparse Kronecker Decomposition Product (CSKPD), which is a frequentist approach for creating a regression model on multi-dimensional and multi-modal tensors to not only obtain highly accurate results but also recover segments of tensor that impact the response,” White says. “This method is robust as it handles transformations to both the response and the initial tensor and can be generalized to handle non-linear transformations. This can be used across multiple fields and data types, but I focused on brain scans to predict early onset Alzheimer’s.” 

Along with having the opportunity to give presentations, the students also had the chance to expand their network and connect with professionals in statistics and data science. 

Kang Li, a doctoral student studying mathematics, shared how this opportunity gave him the chance to discuss his research with professionals.  

“Networking with professionals and academics in statistics and data science was an incredibly enriching experience. I had the chance to connect with someone working on similar topics, and we discussed our respective results,” says Li. “This exchange reinforced the value of collaborative dialogue in advancing our understanding and innovation in the field.” 

This year’s meeting was a unique opportunity for Knights; White reflects on what this opportunity means to him. 

“Winning the ASA Florida Chapter Meeting 2025 Student Presentation Award is incredibly rewarding,” White says. “I have been working on my research under the supervision of Dr. Huang for just over a year now, and it was the first opportunity I had to present our methods outside of my dissertation committee.” 

Professor and chair of the statistics & data science department, Shunpu Zhang, shares that witnessing students earn awards is central to the mission of events like this one.  

“This is a meaningful experience as well as peer recognition for our students,” said Zhang. It’s very important for students to learn about what others are doing in the field and to help them generate new ideas.”