J. Derek Tucker

J. Derek Tucker is an Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Illinois and a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories. He holds a Ph.D. in Statistics from Florida State University (2014) and degrees in Electrical Engineering from Colorado State University (B.S. 2007, M.S. 2009). His research focuses on functional data analysis, geometric methods, unaligned data modeling, statistical image understanding, and Bayesian model calibration. At Illinois, he teaches a topics course on functional data analysis.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Statistics, Florida State University (2014)
• M.S. in Electrical Engineering, Colorado State University (2009)
• B.S. in Electrical Engineering, Colorado State University (2007)

Research Interests:

• Functional data analysis with geometric methods
• Statistical image understanding
• Bayesian model calibration
• Point processes and spatio-temporal modeling
• Uncertainty quantification

His recent work includes advancements in elastic distance metrics for anomaly detection and functional data registration. He has received the Director of National Intelligence Team Award for contributions to SLiCE team projects. Publications span statistical methodology, climate impact analysis, and computational statistics.

Awards:

• Director of National Intelligence Team Award (2020)

Grants and collaborations involve Sandia National Labs and interdisciplinary projects in climate science, materials science, and healthcare analytics. He actively contributes to R packages like 'fdasrvf' for elastic functional data analysis.