Professor Adeline Samson visits MATH
The Velux Fonden Visiting Professor Programme has made it possible for the Department of Mathematical Sciences to invite Professor Adeline Samson to visit the department for a period of 6 month, from 15 April to 14 October 2015.
Adeline Samson is a Professor of Mathematics at Universite Grenoble Alpes in France. During her PhD, she worked primarily in the area of statistics for modeling the viral load decrease for HIV patients. She worked on a new estimation method for parameters of non-linear mixed models, which are adapted when analysing simultaneously longitudinal data from several patients to take into account the inter and intra-subjects variabilities. This method is a stochastic version of the EM algorithm, called the SAEM algorithm.
The algorithm is now implemented in most statistical softwares, especially those used by the pharmaceutical companies. The FDA has now recommended the use of SAEM when analyzing population pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic data.
From 2008, Adeline turned her attention to studying stochastic processes. Stochastic process theory is a large and active research area in statistics today. But until just a few years ago, there were few connections between stochastic process theory and computational statistics. Given her expertise in computational statistics, Adeline has proposed various estimation methods for stochastic processes based on sophisticated computational algorithms such as stochastic approximation, particle filter, sequential Monte Carlo, EM algorithm or Bayesian MCMC.
Adeline has also strong skills in applied statistics. She works with neuroscientists on understanding properties of single neurons, phonetics experts on understanding vocal stress, oncologists on modelling tumor growth, gynecologists on detecting abnormal foetal growth, and sports physicians on detecting doping.
- Adeline Samson is an excellent statistician and an outstanding researcher, and one of my closest research collaborators, says Susanne Ditlevsen, head of the Statistics and Probability Theory Section at MATH.
- Her visit here will be exciting and beneficial for both myself as well as my students and the Department as such. To maximize the benefit of Adeline’s stay in Copenhagen, she will also take part in the supervision of PhD and Master Students.