Murali Haran *

Office : 421B Thomas (Center for Ecology and Environmental Statistics)
Mail : 326 Thomas, University Park, PA 16802.
Phone: 814-863-8126
email: m(followed by my last name all in lower case) at stat.psu.edu

During fall 2009, I will be a New Researcher Fellow in North Carolina at the SAMSI program on space-time analysis for environmental mapping, epidemiology, and climate change.
Research

I am an assistant professor of statistics at Pennsylvania State University. I received my Ph.D. from the School of Statistics at the University of Minnesota and a B.S. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. My research interests include statistical computing (Markov chain Monte Carlo) and spatial modeling (primarily involving Gaussian random fields and Bayesian hierarchical models), with applications to problems in ecology, geosciences, geography and epidemiology. I have also worked on statistical techniques called random forests for applications in software engineering research. For more, please see: background and more on my research.

Select recent papers (longer list: here )

  • Goes, M., Urban, N., Tonkonojenkov, R., Haran, M., and Keller, K. (2009) The skill of different ocean tracers in reducing uncertainties about projections of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation , submitted bibtex

  • Tibbits, M.M., Haran, M., Liechty, J.L. (2009) Parallel multivariate slice sampling , Statistics and Computing (tentatively accepted, subject to revision) bibtex

  • Bhat, K.S., Haran, M., Tonkonojenkov, R., and Keller, K. (2009) Inferring likelihoods and climate system characteristics from climate models and multiple tracers , submitted bibtex

  • Recta, V., Haran, M., and Rosenberger, J.L. (2009) A two-stage model for incidence and prevalence in point-level spatial count data , submitted bibtex

  • Haran, M. (2009) Gaussian random field models for spatial data, to appear in Handbook of Markov chain Monte Carlo , Editors, Brooks, S.P., Gelman, A.E. Jones, G.L. and Meng, X.L., Springer-Verlag. bibtex

  • Haran, M., Bhat, K.S., Molineros, J, and De Wolf, E. (2009) Estimating the risk of a crop epidemic from coincident spatiotemporal processes , accepted for publication in The Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics, DOI: 10.1198/jabes.2009.08006. bibtex

  • Haran, M. and Tierney, L. (2009) On Automating Markov chain Monte Carlo for a class of spatial models, submitted bibtex

  • Flegal, J.M., Haran, M., and Jones, G.L. (2008) Markov chain Monte Carlo: Can we trust the third significant figure? Statistical Science, 23,250--260. bibtex
    Code that implements the consistent batch means procedure for MCMC standard errors as described in the paper: R function , C function and Matlab function for consistent batch means

  • Jones, G.L., Haran, M., Caffo, B.S. and Neath, R. (2006) Fixed Width Output Analysis for Markov chain Monte Carlo , Journal of the American Statistical Association, 101:1537--1547. bibtex

    Teaching

  • Stochastic Processes and Monte Carlo (STAT 515), spring 2010 , (also spring 2005-2009).
  • Spatial Models (STAT 597A), spring 2010 (also fall 2006, 2007).
  • Introduction to Probability Theory (STAT 414), spring 2009
  • Elementary Statistics (STAT 200 (Honors)), fall 2004-2008.
  • Advances in Ecology (ECLGY 597B), fall 2006-2008
  • MCMC Tutorial for Center for Astrostatistics Summer School, June 2005-2009.
  • Elementary Statistics (STAT 200), fall 2004.

    Everything Else (non-academic)


    * pronunciation guide: "u" is pronounced as in the first "u" in "aluminum" ("aluminium" if you are not American); pretend the "a" in "Murali" is silent.