I'm a fifth-year Ph.D. student in Statistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My advisor is Professor Hyunseung Kang. Prior to coming to Madison, I received B.S. in Statistics from the School of Mathematical Sciences at Nankai University in China.
My research interests include transportability/generalizability, sensitivity analysis, causal inference, and robust statistics. [Research page] [Google Scholar]
I'm on the 2025-2026 academic job market for faculty/postdoc positions.
Please drop me an email (xinran.miao@wisc.edu) if you are interested in collaboration and/or would like to share thoughts or opportunaties!News
- October 2025:Our work on SLOPE and Designing Robust Studies for Generalization is now on arXiv!
- August 2025:I presented our work on transfer learning between U.S. presidential elections at JSM 2025.
- June 2025:Our work on transfer learning between U.S. presidential elections received the NESS Student Research Award.
- May 2025:I passed the preliminary exam and became a PhD candidate. Many thanks to my advisor Prof. Hyunseung Kang, as well as Prof. Guanhua Chen, Prof. Melody Huang, Prof. Edward Kennedy and Prof. Qingyuan Zhao who kindly served in my committe and provided valuable feedback!
- May 2025:I presented our work on SLOPE and its role in design for generalization at ACIC.
- April 2025:I'm delighted to receive Summer Research Fellowship from our department and IMS Hannan Graduate Student Travel Award from Institute of Machematical Statistics (IMS).
- February 2025:I presented our work on transfer learning between U.S. presidential election" at MEAD (UW-Madison political science department seminar).
- January 2025:Our paper "Transfer Learning Between U.S. Presidential Elections: How Should We Learn From A 2020 Ad Campaign To Inform 2024 Ad Campaigns?" received ASA Student Paper Award from the SLDS section.
- June 2024:I'm honored to receive the teaching award from our department for the 2023-2024 academic year. [Department News]
- September 2023
Education
Ph.D. in Statistics, University of Wisconsin–Madison
(Expected) 2026
M.S. in Statistics, University of Wisconsin–Madison
2021
B.S. in Statistics, Nankai University
2020
Teaching Experience
Teaching Assistant at UW–Madison
STAT 301: Introduction to Statistics
Introductory course for undergraduate students with a non-statistics major.
Fall 2021, Spring 2022, Summer 2024
STAT 575: Statistical Methods for Spatial Data
Elective course for undergraduate/graduate students.
Spring 2024
STAT 775: Bayesian Statistics (Grader)
Elective course for graduate students.
Spring 2024
STAT 849: Theory and Application of Regression and ANOVA I
Core course for MS/PhD students.
Fall 2023
STAT 849: Advanced Statistical Methods
Core course for MS/PhD students.
Fall 2025
STAT 992: Spectral Methods for Statistical Machine Learning (Grader)
Elective course for graduate students
Fall 2025
Honors and Awards
NESS Student Research Award
Awarded by New England Statistics Symposium (NESS)
2025
IMS Hannan Graduate Student Travel Award
Awarded by Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS)
2025
Morgridge Summer Research Fellowship
Awarded by Department of Statistics, University of Wisconsin–Madison
2025
ASA Best Student Paper Award
Awarded by Statistical Learning and Data Science (SLDS) Section, American Statistical Association
[ASA Announcement]
2025
Outstanding Performance as a Teaching Assistant for Graduate Courses
Awarded by Department of Statistics, University of Wisconsin–Madison
[Department News]
2023–2024
SCI Travel Scholarship
Awarded by Society for Causal Inference (SCI)
2024