Leo Duan's Research Website

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Hello, thanks for checking out my website.

I’m Leo Duan. I’m a statistician and an Associate Professor at the University of Florida.

My research focuses on the interface between optimization and Bayes.

The goal of our research group is to develop new statistical and machine learning toolboxes that just work – which means simple implementation, fast computation, and principled uncertainty quantification.

Achieving this goal is not trivial, which is why we’ve been working to show how one can borrow strengths from two communities: Bayes, who are good at probabilistic modeling, and optimization, who are good at efficient computing. Check out our work below on building optimization-based priors, optimization-based likelihoods, and optimization-based generative models, and feel free to reach out with any questions.

My statisical interest is largely motivated by ongoing collaborative work in neuroscience, engineering, and transportation science.

** My CV can be found** here (updated 2025 May)

Some annoucements!

Research Interests

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Selected forthcoming work (please email me for latest manuscript):

Selected recent work (pre-print and accepted):

Selected Fundings and Awards

2024 UF CLAS Fellowship for Doctoral Student Supervised

2023-2026 NSF-ATD: Geospatial Modeling and Risk Mitigation for Human Movement Dynamics under Hurricane Threats (PI)

2022 UF CLAS Faculty Travel Award

2022-2023 UFII SEED Funding Award

2021 UF Statistics Faculty Award for Doctoral Student Supervised

2018 NeurIPS Bayesian Non-parametrics Award

2015 ASA Paper Competition Award in Section on Bayesian Statistical Science

2014 Woodside Foundation Award for Contribution in Biostatistics and Epidemiology Research

Recent and Upcoming Talks:

August 2025, EcoSta, Tokyo Japan

August 2025, Joint Statistical Meetings, Nashville TN

June 2025, BayesComp, Singapore

May 2025, Statistical Methods in Imaging Conference, Houston, TX

Current PhD Students

Zeyu Yuwen (Expected to graduate in Spring 2025)

Yu Zheng (Expected to graduate in Fall 2025)

Past Trainees

Cheng Zeng

Edric Tam (Postdoctoral Fellow, Stanford University)

Eleni Dilma (Biostatistician, Food and Drug Administration)

Maoran Xu (Assistant Professor, Indiana University)