With the explosion of computing power in the past couple of decades, scientific problems in industry and academic centers alike have come to revolve around the collection of massive amounts of data of overwhelmingly complex structures, solutions to which involve close collaborations between the statistician and scientific experts. The PhD-level statistician must then have expertise to develop and apply computationally-intensive analytical methods to answer scientific queries with such data, and the skills to collaborate with and communicate ideas/results to a scientific team of experts. The Computational Statistics program directly addresses this need, building on the successful Computational Sciences Joint Doctoral Program collaborative team learning environment in which students receive training in computational methods and scientific research collaborations. The program will, in addition, provide students training in statistical methodology, computing, and application/communication as required for the successful PhD-level statistician.

The PhD concentration in Computational Statistics is ideally situated at the interface of Statistics and Computational Sciences, in terms of knowledge and expertise in computationally-intensive statistical methods for scientific applications. Students in the concentration will be trained to work in industry and academia as statisticians with extensive experience in collaborating on a research team to develop, apply, and communicate statistical analyses for solving scientific problems. The degree thus opens a vast array of job opportunities ranging from faculty positions or research posts at Colleges or Universities to positions in biotechnology, pharmaceutical, financial industries, government research labs or University research centers, as a lead statistician, supervising a statistical development and analysis team of Masters and Bachelors level statisticians, on collaborative research projects.

The official title of the program is the Joint Doctoral Program in Computational Science with Concentration in Statistics, offered jointly with Claremont Graduate University. We refer to this doctoral degree as the Computational Statistics PhD program.