Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Super excited to teach Probabilistic Machine Learning in the Spring! Beyond "foundations," I plan to cover graphical models, latent variable models, approximate inference methods, Gaussian processes, Bayesian neural networks, deep generative models, and structural causal models! 000
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 29/09/2026My website is back up! Check out my new site here 👉 raybai.net New links for my blog posts about: - the tenure-track job market ➡️ raybai.net/blog/academi... - Statistics PhD admissions ➡️ raybai.net/blog/demysti... - recent trends in Statistics ➡️ raybai.net/blog/seven-m...raybai.netRay Bai – Assistant Professor, George Mason UniversityRay Bai is an Assistant Professor of Statistics at George Mason University. Research interests: Bayesian statistics, deep learning, and causal inference. 010
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Interesting read from Terence Tao "Recommendations of the Summit on PhD Math Education in the Age of AI" tinyurl.com/yfehwsk5 Is there something like this for Statistics? Read my LinkedIn post describing some ways I've adjusted my own pedagogy here➡️ lnkd.in/p/eP5nNjh5tinyurl.comRecommendations of the Summit on PhD Math Education in the Age of AI[This is a guest post by Bryna Kra and Rachel Ward. -T.] The Summit on PhD Math Education in the Age of AI was held September 17–18, 2026, jointly hosted by the Harvard Department of Mathematics an… 100
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 26/09/2026(1/3) Had to calibrate my Advanced Regression class a bit (a required class for Statistics PhD students), since I wanted to incorporate in-class peer reviews for student projects. But I finally got it! Below is the final schedule! Thread continues in replies ⬇️ 110
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 10/09/2026Looking forward to the class projects from in my PhD-level Advanced Regression class! The students chose topics from a variety of fields, including survival analysis, causal inference, spatial statistics, high-dimensional data, nonparametric regression, and machine learning! 010
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 04/09/2026Pleased to share that our paper "A monotone single-index modal regression powered by deep neural networks for non-Gaussian periodontal data" (joint with my former students Shijie Wang and Qingyang Liu and Qingyang's postdoc advisor Dipankar Bandyopadhyay) has been accepted by Biostatistics! 110
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 20/08/2026Excited to teach an upgraded Advanced Regression class required for Statistics PhD students! I've taught variants of this class before, but this time, I'm introducing new weekly units on deep learning, causal inference, conformal prediction, and anytime-valid inference! 020
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 06/08/2026If you're at EcoSta, come join my session "Modern Advances in Bayesian Computation and Inference" this weekend! Aug. 9, 10:00 am Japan time (or Sat., Aug. 8, 9:00 pm EST if you're virtual!) Very cool talks on DGMs, variational Bayes, and approximate MCMC for scalable Bayesian inference. 011
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 17/07/2026New NSF grant awarded, collaborative with Ting Fung Ma from the University of South Carolina! We will use this grant to develop new methods for scalable, single-pass inference on large dependent datasets! 010
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 27/06/2026First meal of my first full day in Japan: an excellent Japanese-style breakfast! Excited to attend the 2026 ISBA World Meeting, explore Nagoya, and visit Gibhli Park this upcoming week. 030
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 25/06/2026I am on my way to Nagoya, Japan for the 2026 ISBA World Meeting! Let's catch up if you're also going to be there! As a diehard Studio Gibhli fan, I also can't wait to visit Gibhli Park. 010
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 24/06/2026I've found Google Gemini to be very helpful in some prose refinement and technical editing (esp. when I need to fit page limits), but its suggestions are often very dramatic and almost theatrical too -- using terms like "pristine," "total vacuum," "mathematical collapse." LMAO 000
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 22/06/2026It was a great pleasure to catch up with my @uofscstatistics.bsky.social colleagues at the 2026 ICSA Applied Statistics Symposium here at GMU last week! Here I am with USC faculty Shanghong Xie, Zhiling Gu (incoming Asst Prof), and Edsel Pena (not pictured: Ting Fung Ma and Yuexuan Wu). 000
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 12/06/2026I will be speaking at the 2026 ICSA Applied Statistics Symposium (symposium2026.icsa.org) next Monday, June 15 in Track 10: Advances in Sampling (1:00-2:30 PM)! My talk will be about the intrinsic limits to heavy-tailed learning with deep generative models. Come join if interested!symposium2026.icsa.org2026 ICSA Applied Statistics Symposium 010
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 10/06/2026South Carolina Senate rejected redistricting plan 2 weeks ago, and now Nancy Mace is out of a job? Great job, my former state of residence! www.advocate.com/politics/nat...advocate.comSarah McBride gets last laugh after Nancy Mace’s devastating election loss: ‘Happy Pride, Nancy’The Advocate was there and got video, and it's awesome. 000
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 13/05/2026Looking forward to my organized session "Modern Advances in Bayesian Computation and Inference" at EcoSta 2026 this August! Some great talks on state-of-the-art Bayesian inference using variational inference, generative models, and scalable MCMC! 000
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 30/03/2026Lovely time visiting U. of South Carolina for the USC Department of Statistics 40th Anniversary conference! During my visit, I also got to enjoy Korean bbq at MOA with my 2 USC PhD students Sijian and Fanghua, and have dinner with the legendary statistician/data scientist Bin Yu from UC Berkeley! 010
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 25/03/2026Visiting the University of South Carolina this week, and my third PhD student Sijian Fan successfully defended his PhD dissertation, "Statistical Learning for Binary Data with Applications in Bioinformatics"! Excellent job! #professor #proudadvisor #universityofsouthcarolina 010
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 21/03/2026Excited for my PhD student Sijian's final defense this upcoming Wednesday! It's taking place at 11:00 am EST on Mar. 25 in LeConte 229 at the University of South Carolina! All who are free and on USC's campus at that time are welcome to join! 000
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 20/03/2026Another new preprint! "BVSIMC: Bayesian variable selection-guided inductive matrix completion for improved and interpretable drug discovery" (with my PhD student Sijian Fan and our co-authors Liyan Xiong, Dayuan Wang, and Guoshuai Cai). Check it out 👉 arxiv.org/abs/2603.18957 000
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 20/03/2026New preprint of paper with my PhD student Sijian Fan: "BiSSLB: Binary Spike-and-Slab Lasso Biclustering"! We developed a biclustering method for binary data. It works really well on particularly noisy data with many 0's in 1-filled patterns or isolated 1's. arxiv.org/abs/2603.18378 000
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 18/03/2026I'll be in Columbia, SC next week starting on Wed. for my PhD student Sijian's final dissertation defense and for @uofscstatistics.bsky.social's 40th anniversary conference! Looking forward to seeing old colleagues at USC! 000
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 16/03/2026Yasss Amy Madigan! Well-deserved Oscar for her incredible performance as Gladys in "Weapons"! 001
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 10/03/2026I am pleased to share that my paper "VCBART: Bayesian Trees for Varying Coefficients" (with Sameer Deshpande, Cecilia Balocchi, Jennifer Sterling, and Jordan Weiss) has been published in the latest issue of Bayesian Analysis! Read it here: doi.org/10.1214/24-B...doi.org 040
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 03/03/2026New blog post: "Seven Major Directions and Trends in Modern Statistics"! In this post, I summarize a few of the latest trends and prominent areas in the field of statistics. raybai.net/seven-major-...raybai.netSeven Major Directions and Trends in Modern Statistics – Ray Bai 000
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 25/02/2026I often explain deep learning and DGMs to non-experts & students who are not familiar but are interested in exploring this area. I find it's very helpful to start by framing linear regression and logistic regression as special cases of neural networks with a single output layer. 010
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 15/02/2026(1/2) It's always a bit wild to me when something I learned many years ago comes up again. I wasn't sure I'd ever use differential equations again, but now with flow matching and diffusion models being the current state-of-the-art generative models, I'm reviewing a bit of ODEs. 130
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 13/02/2026A bit late but group pic from the Maryland Statistics Symposium at Brinn Mathematics Research Center this past Dec! Left to right: Jianhui Zhou, Gemma Moran, Lizhen Lin, Alden Green, Ray Bai, Anindya Roy, Cindy Rush, Yubai Yuan, Yun Yang, Yang Feng, Anderson Ye Zhang, Yanyuan Ma 000
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 12/02/2026I hope Sinners wins the Academy Award for Best Picture this year. Not just because it was an incredible movie, but because as a longtime horror aficionado, this would signal a broader appetite for horror & other genre-bending films in the academy (justice for Get Out!). 000
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 10/02/2026I'm giving a talk "Deep Generative Models for Statistical Problems: Methods, Computation, and Theory" at the UMBC Mathematics and Statistics Dept next Friday, Feb. 20 from 11:00 am-12:00 pm! Come join if you're in the area. mathstat.umbc.edu/events/event... 020
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 09/02/2026This Super Bowl game is fairly boring, but absolutely loved the Halftime Show and the other musical performances! Green Day, Lady Gaga, Bad Bunny ❤️❤️ 000
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 03/02/2026Congrats to my collaborator and former student Qingyang Liu (I taught him in 2 classes, served on his dissertation committee, and have co-authored several papers with him)! He will be joining @wakeforeststats.bsky.social as an Assistant Professor in July. 🥳Great department! 000
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 08/01/2026To anyone who is on the job market in Statistics this academic year: the George Mason University (GMU) Department of Statistics is hiring for open-rank, tenure-track or tenured positions! For full consideration, apply by January 14 at this link: tinyurl.com/6mjs8fyetinyurl.comOpen-Rank, Tenured/Tenure-Track Statistics Faculty - Fairfax, VA, Virginia, United StatesDepartment: Col of Engineering and Computing Classification: 9-month Instructional Faculty Job Category: Instructional Faculty Job Type: Full-Time Work Schedule: Full-time (1.0 FTE, 40 hrs/wk) Locatio... 013
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 06/01/2026So maddening what happened at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln magazine.amstat.org/blog/2026/01...magazine.amstat.org 000
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 02/01/2026Our paper "Quantifying predictive uncertainty of aphasia severity in stroke patients with sparse heteroscedastic Bayesian high-dimensional regression" was published in the most recent issue of Computational Statistics. Read the paper here: doi.org/10.1007/s001... 010
Reposted by Ray BaiAndrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · 09/12/2025Some closing thoughts for my students this semester on LLMs and learning #rstats datavizf25.classes.andrewheiss.com/news/2025-12... 14336103
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 12/12/2025Grading my final exams for undergrad probability & statistics, and this response to one of my questions seriously made me laugh out loud for minutes. Should I give Extra Credit for the student's response? "Bob, you are a fool amongst fools." 😂😂😂 010
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 10/12/2025Our R package for VCBART, or fitting BART-based varying coefficient models, is now available on CRAN! Useful for flexible regression modeling + can be used to estimate heterogeneous treatment effects in causal inference by specifying X and Z appropriately. Check it cran.r-project.org/web/packages...cran.r-project.org 010
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 08/12/2025Yes. "... the skills that future graduates will most need in the AI era—creative thinking, the capacity to learn new things, flexible modes of analysis—are precisely those that are likely to be eroded by inserting AI into the educational process."theatlantic.comColleges Are Preparing to Self-LobotomizeThe skills that students will need in an age of automation are precisely those that are eroded by inserting AI into the educational process. 010
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 06/12/2025A sad day for the statistics community. U. of Nebraska Board of Regents voted to eliminate UNL's Department of Statistics.linkedin.comYesterday was a very sad day for all of Statistics: The University of Nebraska Board of Regents voted 9-1 (with 2 abstentions) to eliminate its Department of Statistics (https://lnkd.in/gJzJ_yki)… | C...Yesterday was a very sad day for all of Statistics: The University of Nebraska Board of Regents voted 9-1 (with 2 abstentions) to eliminate its Department of Statistics (https://lnkd.in/gJzJ_yki). The... 010
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 05/12/2025I'm at the Brin Mathematics Research Center today for the Maryland Statistics Symposium! Presenting my work on generative quantile regression w/ former PhD student Dr. Shijie Wang (U. South Carolina '24) and Dr. Minsuk Shin of Yonsei U. (published in JCGS last year). 010
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 24/11/2025The Maryland Statistical Symposium looks awesome! brinmrc.umd.edu/fall25-mss/ So honored to be invited to speak at this event alongside many outstanding researchers, some of whose work I have followed and admired for years!brinmrc.umd.eduMaryland Statistical Symposium | Brin Mathematics Research Center 011
Reposted by Ray BaiSusan Vanderplas @srvanderplas.bsky.social · 07/11/2025If you're following the #UNL #statistics saga (proposed for elimination based on bad stats), you might find the seminar we gave yesterday interesting... youtu.be/fUk2R0UYWpA It was weird to rail against someone for an hour, but strangely cathartic, and the #datavis seems to have been effective?youtu.beUniversity of Nebraska-Lincoln Department of Statistics seminar "The Metrics" on November 6, 2025YouTube video by Chris Bilder 198
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 05/11/2025Congrats 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! 060
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 05/11/2025Having a great time visiting Columbia, SC and catching up with old friends and coworkers! I will always be grateful to @uofscstatistics.bsky.social for helping me to launch my career! 030
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 29/10/2025One 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! 031
Ray Bai @raybai07.bsky.social · 21/10/2025Excited 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. 000