News

December 2025

• 

  KAUST researchers define the emerging field of high-performance statistical computing (HPSC)

  4 min read · Sun, Dec 14 2025

  News

  exascale GPU HPC mixed-precision computing Statistical computing

  KAUST researchers outline a new discipline for statistical computing at supercomputing scale.

April 2025

• 

  KAUST climate research named finalist for ADIA Lab Climate Data Sciences Award

  3 min read · Sun, Apr 20 2025

  News

  climate data stochastic computational science climate change

  KAUST team develops breakthrough method for wind data generation, earning finalist spot for ADIA Lab’s climate science award.

November 2024

• 

  KAUST wins the “Nobel” of high-performance computing for climate modeling

  1 min read · Fri, Nov 22 2024

  News Clip News

  HPC climate projections extreme computing computational simulations uncertainty quantification

  KAUST has been awarded the “Nobel" prize of high-performance computing—the ACM Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modelling—in partnership with the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research, U.S. and other partner institutions.

September 2024

• 

  A high-resolution boost for global climate modeling

  1 min read · Sun, Sep 15 2024

  News Clip News

  New statistical approach enables fast approximations of global surface temperatures at unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution.

August 2024

• 

  KAUST researchers earn dual Bell finalist selections

  1 min read · Thu, Aug 1 2024

  News Clip Awards

  KAUST has achieved a historic double finalist selection for the ACM Gordon Bell Prize and the ACM Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modeling, recognizing two innovative research projects in collaboration with global partners that demonstrate the power of interdisciplinary teamwork in high-performance computing and climate science.

July 2024

• 

  KAUST team selected as ACM Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modelling finalists

  4 min read · Tue, Jul 23 2024

  News

  A new exascale climate emulator marks a significant advancement as the first to generate, display and evaluate hourly emulations. This breakthrough secured an interdisciplinary research team from KAUST, working alongside the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research in the U.S. and other partner institutions, a spot as a finalist for the prestigious Gordon Bell Prize in Climate Modelling.

May 2024

• 

  Professor Marc Genton receives the prestigious 2024 Don Owen Award

  1 min read · Sun, May 12 2024

  Awards News

  Environmental Statistics wind energy

  KAUST Professor Marc Genton, a pioneer in environmental statistics, was awarded the prestigious 2024 Don Owen Award for his outstanding contributions to research, consultation, and service to the statistical community.

April 2023

• 

  KAUST STAT Program graduates secure faculty positions at prominent U.S. universities

  1 min read · Wed, Apr 19 2023

  News

  KAUST graduates are characterized by the rigor of their Ph.D. programs, the long hours spent in the lab and classroom, juggling professional and personal commitments, achieving a work-life balance and, more recently, the ability to adapt to a global pandemic.

March 2023

• 

  Professor Marc Genton receives the Royal Statistical Society’s Barnett Award for 2023

  1 min read · Wed, Mar 29 2023

  Spotlight News

  KAUST Distinguished Professor of Statistics Marc Genton has received the Royal Statistical Society’s (RSS) 2023 Barnett Award.
• 

  A little competition improves statistics

  1 min read · Mon, Mar 6 2023

  News

  A competition on spatial statistics showcases the global state of the art in analyzing vast spatial datasets.

November 2022

• 

  A skewed model for imbalanced health data

  1 min read · Thu, Nov 10 2022

  News

  An asymmetric statistical model provides a better fit for imbalanced data with rare "positives," such as longitudinal health datasets.

August 2022

• 

  A model for millions of locations

  1 min read · Tue, Aug 23 2022

  News

  climate change Environmental Statistics modeling statistics

  CEMSE statisticians developed a framework which enables modeling of a range of meteorological and environmental datasets from up to 2 million locations globally.

April 2022

• 

  Finding Terra Incognita

  1 min read · Thu, Apr 28 2022

  News

  extreme weather modeling modeling climate science statistics

  A new study addresses the difficulty in modeling atmospheric turbulence at sub-kilometer resolution, which is challenging due to atmospheric variability, meteorology and changeable terrain such as mountains and cities.

January 2022

• 

  Competition sheds light on approximation methods for large spatial datasets

  1 min read · Thu, Jan 20 2022

  News

  extreme statistics modeling big data statistics

  Marc Genton, Huang Huang and colleagues from KAUST organized a global competition with 21 competing teams to compare different approximation methods for analyzing large spatial datasets.

July 2021

• 

  Mixing precision for model acceleration

  1 min read · Mon, Jul 26 2021

  News

  extreme computing supercomputing big data statistics

  A mixed-precision approach for modeling large geospatial datasets can achieve benchmark accuracy with a fraction of the computational run time.

April 2021

• 

  Star light, star bright…as explained by math

  1 min read · Sun, Apr 25 2021

  News

  extreme statistics big data statistics

  The evolving periodicity of the brightness of certain types of stars can now be described mathematically.
• 

  Introducing "THE FANTASTATISTICS 4"

  1 min read · Thu, Apr 15 2021

  News

  Introducing KAUST’s very own "THE FANTASTATISTICS 4." Gaurav Agarwal, Jian Cao, Wanfang Chen, and Yuxiao Li are four Ph.D. alumni from the Statistics program at KAUST. The four students obtained their Ph.D.s last year under the supervision of Professor Ying Sun, Agarwal and Li, and Distinguished Professor Marc Genton, Cao and Chen, respectively.

December 2020

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  KAUST STAT students come together for second ASA chapter meeting

  1 min read · Thu, Dec 3 2020

  News

  statistics data science

  Members of the KAUST American Statistical Association (ASA) student chapter recently came together for the group’s second online meeting held on Tuesday, November 10, 2020. The meeting served as an orientation exercise for new KAUST Statistics (STAT) Program students while also highlighting the shared experience of STAT Ph.D. candidates: Jian Cao, Wanfang Chen, Yuxiao Li, and Gaurav Agarwal.

November 2020

• 

  Deep learning in the emergency department

  1 min read · Sun, Nov 22 2020

  News

  machine learning artificial intelligence statistics human health

  Harnessing the power of deep learning leads to better predictions of patient admissions and flow in emergency departments.

October 2020

• 

  Today we celebrate World Statistics Day!

  1 min read · Tue, Oct 20 2020

  News

  statistics healthcare

  Let’s discover the world of the statisticians at KAUST and be ready to be amazed by their cutting-edge research!

September 2020

• 

  Wind forecasts power up for reliable energy production

  1 min read · Sun, Sep 27 2020

  News

  climate science statistics

  Prediction of wind speed and direction for up to several hours in advance improves Saudi Arabia’s wind energy potential.
• 

  Turning your desktop to a Supercomputer with ExaGeoStatR

  1 min read · Mon, Sep 7 2020

  News

  Maximum Likelihood HPC Environmental Statistics

  Turning your desktop to a Supercomputer with ExaGeoStatR Download at https://github.com/ecrc/exageostatR. Remember the old times where you had to leave your R simulations running for the whole night on your desktop due to a large climate/weather dataset? ExaGeoStatR combines the user productivity of R with high performance computing linear algebra software libraries to deliver supercomputing-style environment right below your desk. ExaGeoStatR enables computing the maximum likelihood using large environmental datasets on R, while extracting performance from the underlying hardware resources

July 2020

• 

  Blueprint may power up KSA's wind energy future

  1 min read · Thu, Jul 23 2020

  News

  energy security climate science statistics

  High-resolution analysis of wind speed across Saudi Arabia can help fast track the expansion of the Kingdom’s emerging world-class wind energy industry.

February 2020

• 

  Pop stats for big geodata

  1 min read · Mon, Feb 24 2020

  News

  climate change statistics

  A universal high-performance computing interface allows popular statistical tools to run efficiently on large geospatial datasets.
• 

  Wanfang Chen wins ASA ENVR Student Paper Award

  1 min read · Mon, Feb 17 2020

  News

  ENVR

  Wanfang Chen, a Ph.D. candidate in statistics, and member of Distinguished Professor Marc Genton’s Spatio-Temporal Statistics & Data Science (STSDS) research group, recently won a Student Paper Award sponsored by the Section on Statistics and the Environment (ENVR) of the American Statistical Association (ASA).

January 2020

• 

  Distinguished Professor Marc Genton selected as the 2020 Georges Matheron Lecturer of the IAMG

  1 min read · Tue, Jan 21 2020

  Spotlight News

  IAMG

  Marc Genton, chair, and distinguished professor of the KAUST Statistics Program, was recently selected as the 2020 Georges Matheron Lecturer of the International Association for Mathematical Geosciences (IAMG).
• 

  KAUST STAT Students Launch First ASA Chapter Outside of the U.S.

  1 min read · Mon, Jan 6 2020

  News

  This October, Zhuo Qu, a Ph.D. candidate in statistics, along with several of her fellow Statistics (STAT) Program students launched the first-ever American Statistical Association (ASA) student chapter outside of the United States.

December 2019

• 

  2019 Statistics and Data Science Workshop

  1 min read · Wed, Dec 11 2019

  News

  data science statistics

  From November 18 to 20 the KAUST CEMSE Division has hosted the 2019 Statistics and Data Science Workshop. The workshop, organized by Workshop Chair Professor Ying Sun from the KAUST Environmental Statistics Group, featured 17 keynote talks from eminent data science researchers from Asia, Europe, North America and on-campus. Talks included: personalized recommendation by learning from heterogeneous graph data; dynamic spatial panel models; networks, common shocks, and sequential exogeneity; unbiased Markov chain Monte Carlo, plus many more.

October 2019

• 

  3 Faculty Positions in Statistics 2020 at KAUST

  1 min read · Tue, Oct 1 2019

  News

  statistics

  The 3 faculty positions are in the Statistics Program (http://stat.kaust.edu.sa) within the Computer, Electrical, and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering Division. Currently, the Statistics Program has 7 core faculty and 10 affiliated faculty. We are primarily interested in applicants with strong background in one of the following areas: (1) Statistical Data Science and AI, including network data analysis and high-dimensional statistics (https://apply.interfolio.com/69165); (2) Statistical Climatology, with expertise in statistical analysis of climate model output data, in particular regional climate models, and in physical systems (https://apply.interfolio.com/69167); (3) Statistics for Public Health, including smart health data analysis, personalized medicine, and disease mapping (https://apply.interfolio.com/69168).

September 2019

• 

  Marc Genton received an ISI Service Award 2019

  1 min read · Sun, Sep 15 2019

  Awards Spotlight News

  statistics visualization computational predictions

  Marc Genton, Chair and Distinguished Professor of the Statistics Program of KAUST and Head of the Spatio-Temporal Statistics and Data Science Research Group, received an International Statistical Institute (ISI) Service Award 2019 for his efforts and leadership as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Stat. Professor Genton received his award at the Awards Ceremony during the World Statistical Congress (WSC) 2019 held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 18-23 August 2019.

July 2019

• 

  CEMSE Alumni: Mohammed Alsobay (Statistics Program)

  1 min read · Sun, Jul 21 2019

  Spotlight

  statistics

  CEMSE Alumni: Mohammed Alsobay (Statistics Program)

April 2019

• 

  KAUST alumna’s paper recognized by American Statistical Association

  1 min read · Tue, Apr 30 2019

  Awards News Spotlight

  data transformations wind emulation and forecasting depth for functional data

  KAUST alumna Yuan Yan recently received an honorable mention from the American Statistical Association (ASA) for her paper entitled "Vector Autoregressive Models with Spatially Structured Coefficients for Time Series on a Spatial Grid." Yan, who participated in the ASA student paper competition last year, will be officially recognized for her contribution later this year at the association's 2019 Joint Statistical Meetings in Denver, Colorado, U.S., from July 27 to August 1.
• 

  KAUST Ph.D. student wins best paper award from American Statistical Association

  1 min read · Thu, Apr 25 2019

  Awards News Spotlight

  Statistical computing High Performance Computing

  KAUST Ph.D. statistics student Jian Cao was recently selected as a best paper award winner by the American Statistical Association (ASA) for his paper entitled "Computing High-Dimensional Normal and Student-t Probabilities with Tile-Low-Rank Quasi-Monte Carlo and Block Reordering." Cao's paper was chosen in an ASA student paper competition under the section on Statistical Computing.

March 2018

• 

  Student Focus: Wanfang Chen and Yuxiao Li

  1 min read · Sun, Mar 18 2018

  News Spotlight

  student focus

  Married couple Wanfang Chen and Yuxiao Li came to KAUST in August 2016 to pursue their Ph.D. studies in the field of statistics. Both students are based in the University's Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science & Engineering division—Chen under the supervision of Distinguished Professor Marc Genton and Li under the supervision of Professor Ying Sun. Prior to joining KAUST, both Chen and Li obtained their undergraduate degrees in mathematics at the Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT). Chen completed her master's degree in econometrics at Xiamen University (XMU), China, while Li

January 2018

• 

  Best 2016 Paper in the Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics

  1 min read · Mon, Jan 15 2018

  Spotlight News

  statistics spatial statistics Spatial extremes

  Professor Huser will present the work in a special invited session (JABES showcase) at the International Biometric Conference taking place in Barcelona, Spain, in July 2018.

December 2017

• 

  PhD student Sabrina Vettori selected for an ENAR Distinguished Student Paper Award. Congrats!

  1 min read · Tue, Dec 5 2017

  News Spotlight

  statistics air pollution

  PhD student Sabrina Vettori has been selected by the International Biometric Society Eastern North American Region (ENAR) to receive a Distinguished Student Paper Award at the 2018 ENAR Spring Meeting in Atlanta ( https://www.enar.org/meetings/spring2018/index.cfm ) for her manuscript entitled " Bayesian Hierarchical Modelling of Air Pollution Extremes Using Multivariate Max-Stable Processes ". She will present her work at an oral contributed paper session, be invited to attend the ENAR President’s reception and publicly receive their award at the beginning of the ENAR President’s Invited

November 2017

• 

  2017 Workshop Modern Statistics for Complex Data Structures

  1 min read · Sun, Nov 12 2017

  Spotlight News

  statistics

  2017 Workshop Modern Statistics for Complex Data Structures

December 2016

• 

  CEMSE Big Data Open Day shows off fascinating discoveries

  1 min read · Thu, Dec 8 2016

  News

  big data machine learning knowledge discovery supercomputing

  The fifth-anniversary event marked CEMSE's biggest successes and featured 20 KAUST discoveries, with more than 1,000 visitors from the community attending the event."Big data has many applications: to understand medicine better; to manage food supplies, and to connect objects. Data is at the center of everything," said Dean Mootaz Elnozahy of the University's Computer, Electrical, Mathematical Science and Engineering (CEMSE) Division at the CEMSE Big Data Open Day held on December 4, 2016.

October 2016

• 

  2016 Workshop Statistics for High-Dimensional & Complex Data

  1 min read · Mon, Oct 31 2016

  News

  statistics

  Workshop on Statistics for High-Dimensional and Complex Data, Nov. 6-9, 2016​ Organizers : Prof. Marc G. Genton, Chair of Spatio-Temporal Statistics and Data Science Group Prof. Raphael Huser, Chair of Extreme Statistics Group​ Prof. Ying Sun​, Chair of Environmental Statistics Group Confirmed speakers: Prof. David Bolin, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden Prof. Probal Chaudhuri, Indian Statistical Institute, India Prof. Dan Cooley, Colorado State University, USA​ Prof. Subhajit Dutta, IIT Kanpur, India Prof. Amanda Hering, Baylor University, USA Dr. Anna Kiriliouk, Université
• 

  Professor Marc Genton named Distinguished Professor of Statistics at KAUST

  1 min read · Wed, Oct 26 2016

  News

  computational predictions mathematical modelling visualization

  Marc G.Genton, Professor of Statistics in the Division of Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering (CEMSE), has been appointed by KAUST President Jean-Lou Chameau to Distinguished Professor of Statistics.

October 2015

• 

  2015 Workshop on Computational Space-Time Statistics

  1 min read · Sun, Oct 4 2015

  Spotlight News

  statistics spatio-temporal statistics Bayesian computational statistics

  Organizers : Prof. Marc G. Genton , Chair of Spatio-Temporal Statistics and Data Science Group Prof. Raphael Huser, Chair of Extreme Statistics Group​ Prof. Ying Sun​, Chair of Environmental Statistics Group Confirmed speakers: Prof. Sudipto Banerjee, University of California Los Angeles, USA Prof. Souhaib Ben Taieb, Monash University, Australia Prof. Stefano Castruccio, Newcastle University, UK Prof. Miguel de Carvalho, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile,​ Chile Prof. Clément Dombry, University of Franche-Comté , France Prof. Xuming He, University of Michigan, USA Prof. Hsin-Cheng Huang

June 2015

• 

  L'oreal-UNESCO UK & Ireland For Women In Science Fellowships (FWIS) for the article "Modelling particulate matter pollution from vegetation fires in South-East Asia".

  1 min read · Wed, Jun 24 2015

  News

  data analysis visuanimation statistics

  Paola Crippa (presently at University of Newcastle, UK) is one of the winners of the highly contested 2015 L'oreal-UNESCO UK & Ireland For Women In Science Fellowships (FWIS) for the article "Modelling particulate matter pollution from vegetation fires in South-East Asia".