Samuel Kou

Samuel Kou is Professor of Statistics at Harvard University. He was born in Lanzhou, China. He received a bachelor’s degree in computational mathematics from Peking University in 1997, followed by a Ph.D. in statistics from Stanford University in 2001 under the supervision of Professor Bradley Efron. After completing his Ph.D., he joined Harvard University as an Assistant Professor. He was promoted to full professor in 2008.

His research interests include stochastic inference in single molecule biophysics, chemistry, and biology; Bayesian inference for stochastic models; nonparametric statistical methods; model selection and empirical Bayes methods; Monte Carlo methods; and economic and financial modeling.

He is the recipient of the COPSS (Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies) Presidents’ Award; a U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER Award; the Raymond J. Carroll Young Investigator Award; the Institute of Mathematical Statistics Richard Tweedie Award; and the American Statistical Association Outstanding Statistical Application Award. He is an elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association, an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, and a Medallion Lecturer and an elected Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.