Last day at University of South Carolina and my advisees came to meet with me one last time! My Senior Honors thesis student Leah, my Summer REU student Evan, & my PhD students Fanghua and Sijian. So fortunate to have had the opportunity to work w/ outstanding students at USC. #professor #proudadvisor

Had such a great time at our going away get-together tonight! We are so grateful for the friends we made in Columbia, SC. We will be back to visit again. Come visit us in DC! ❤️

My previous employer, the University of South Carolina Department of Statistics, has a new opening for a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor position with a start date of August 16, 2026. This is a great place to work! Apply by November 17, 2025 for full consideration.

It's official now. My new faculty page at Statistics @ George Mason University is now up: statistics.gmu.edu/profiles/rbai2

University of Florida crew now at Statistics @ George Mason University! Ray Bai (PhD student at UF from 2014-2018), Brenda Betancourt (Assistant Professor at UF from 2018-2022), and Abolfazl Safikhani (Assistant Professor at UF from 2019-2022). Small world!

Going to be back at University of South Carolina Nov. 4-5 for my Honors thesis student Leah's defense! Excited to see her exceptional work on Bayesian modeling of maternal mortality w/ suppressed data (a challenging project that she tackled very well). Hope to catch up w/ folks!

Our paper, "Quantifying predictive uncertainty of aphasia severity in stroke patients with sparse heteroscedastic Bayesian high-dimensional regression," has been accepted for publication in Computational Statistics! Read it here: raybai.net/wp-content/upl…

I'm pleased to share that my single-authored paper "Bayesian group regularization in generalized linear models with a continuous spike-and-slab prior" has been accepted for publication in Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics! Link: raybai.net/wp-content/upl…

Turning 40 in a week (!). Here are some old photos of me when I was 30-31 yrs old and much more fit/30 pounds lighter. Need to get back into shape, maybe join a local running group again!

Today is my 40th birthday, and I had a very special treat for it -- getting to meet one of my idols, Dr. Jianqin Fan! Dr. Fan's papers on SCAD penalty and sure independence screening for high-dimensional data were among the first papers I read as a PhD student. So inspiring!

This is not a particularly good take and is indicative of a fundamental misunderstanding of what a top-tier technical college education is suppose to offer. Preparing to understand modern AI as a Harvard or Stanford undergrad is not about learning "prompt engineering", vibe

My AISM paper "Bayesian group regularization in generalized linear models with a continuous spike-and-slab prior" is now online! I really appreciated the feedback from reviewers who wrote very thorough, high-quality reviews. A+ experience submitting here. tinyurl.com/yc6phfwv

Excited to give a talk at the Maryland Statistical Symposium at the Brin Mathematics Research Center this December! Looking forward to connecting with many outstanding statistics researchers in the DMV area and the mid-Atlantic region.

One week till my trip to Columbia, SC to see my Honors student Leah defend her senior thesis! She did an excellent job on Bayesian spatiotemporal modeling of maternal mortality in South Carolina from 2018-2023. She coded up the model in Stan & R and produced some very nice maps!

#Halloween2025 Really scary.

Great job, Netherlands! people.com/netherlands-el…

nailed it

Having a great time visiting Columbia, SC and catching up with old friends and colleagues! I will always be grateful to UofSC Statistics Department for helping to jumpstart my career!

Congrats to my student Leah Wood for successfully defending her Senior honors thesis "Spatiotemporal Modeling of Maternal Mortality in South Carolina 2018-2023"! Leah will pursue a Masters in Biostatistics next This was on par with an excellent Masters thesis, tbh. Great job!

For anyone following the UNL Statistics saga: youtube.com/watch?v=fUk2R0…