Speakers: Petruța Caragea, PhD

Petruța Caragea, PhD

Professor of Statistics
Iowa State University

 

Professor Caragea joined the Department of Statistics at Iowa State University in 2003, after receiving her M.S. and Ph. D. in Statistics from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research interests are centered around developing statistical methodology for data with spatial and temporal dependence, grounded in applications from environmental, agricultural and biological research. Professor Caragea is the Associate Department Chair since 2014, and is greatly involved with the graduate program, including recruitment and mentoring of graduate students. She has strong ties with several research groups at national labs, wand actively collaborates with statisticians at NASA-JPL, PNNL and LANL.

F(unctional) ANOVA for Data with Complex Dependence and its Application to Satellite-derived Vegetation Indexes Harmony Between Artificial Intelligence and Biomedical Informatics

Observing vegetation indexes through remote sensing is a useful approach for monitoring, characterizing, and predicting crop growth cycles, as well as discerning the impacts of weather pattern changes, and various significant phenological phenomena. The data collection often spans extended time periods and encompasses geographically diverse areas. The scientific questions related to characterizing and comparing phenological behavior present intriguing challenges for statistical analysis. In this presentation, I will introduce an approach for comparing phenological behavior across regions with distinct underlying conditions, and quantifying the uncertainty linked to our estimates and forecasts. An example of the use of this methodology with data from a recent forest fire in California will show how this can implemented and used in practice.