Hello, thanks for checking out my website.

I’m Leo Duan. I’m a statistician and an assistant professor at University of Florida since 2018.

My research aims to build new statistical methods, theory and computational toolboxes for addressing motivating application problems in neuroscience, engineering, and transportation science. The main statistical interest is in modeling the combinatorial objects that are routinely used in science and engineering (e.g., tree graphs, clustering, signal pathways, integer flow networks, etc.). Our research generates interesting solutions at the intersection between combinatorics, optimization, and Bayesian statistics.

My CV can be found here (updated 2024 Oct)

Some annoucements!

Prof. Jason Xu and I are teaching a short course “Harnessing Optimization in Bayesian Inference” at JSM 2025 in Nashville Tennessee. Stay tuned for further detail.

Research Interests

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

• Yu Zheng, Malay Ghosh and Leo L. Duan. Statistical Modeling of Combinatorial Response Data.
• Zitian Wu, Arkaprava Roy and Leo L. Duan. Model-based Inference for Persistent Homology.

Selected recent work (pre-print and accepted):

• Cheng Zeng, Yaozhi Yang, Jason Xu and Leo L. Duan. Gradient-Bridged Posterior: Bayesian Inference for Models with Implicit Function.
• Edric Tam, David B. Dunson and Leo L. Duan. Exact Sampling of Spanning Trees via Fast-forwarded Random Walks. (R&R at Biometrika)
• Leo L. Duan and Anirban Bhattacharya. Graph-accelerated Markov Chain Monte Carlo. (Under Review at JMLR)
• Cheng Zeng, Eleni Dilma, Jason Xu and Leo L. Duan. Bridged Posterior: Optimization, Profile Likelihood and a New Approach for Generalized Bayes. (Under Review at JASA)
• Yu Zheng and Leo L. Duan. Gibbs Sampling using Anti-correlation Gaussian Data Augmentation, with Applications to L1-ball-type Models. JCGS 2025.
• Yu Zheng, Leo L. Duan and Arkaprava Roy. Consistency of Graphical Model-based Clustering: Robust Clustering using Bayesian Spanning Forest 2024
• Leo L. Duan and David B. Dunson. Bayesian Spanning Tree: Estimating the Backbone of the Dependence Graph. JMLR 2024.
• Maoran Xu and Leo L. Duan. Bayesian Inference with the L1-ball Prior: Solving Combinatorial Problems with Exact Zeros. JRSSB, 2023.
• Maoran Xu, Hua Zhou, Yujie Hu and Leo L. Duan. Bayesian Inference using the Proximal Mapping: Uncertainty Quantification under Varying Dimensionality. JASA, 2023.
• Leo L. Duan and Arkaprava Roy. Spectral Clustering, Spanning Forest, and Bayesian Forest Process. JASA, 2023.
• Cheng Zeng, Jeffrey Miller and Leo L. Duan. Quasi-Bernoulli Stick-breaking: Infinite Mixture with Cluster Consistency. JMLR, 2023
• Leo L. Duan, Zeyu Yuwen, George Michailidis and Zhengwu Zhang. Bayesian Vector Autoregression using the Tree Rank Prior. JMLR, 2023
• Leo L. Duan, George Michailidis and Mingzhou Ding. Spiked Laplacian Graph. JMLR, 2022.
• Leo L. Duan and David B. Dunson. Bayesian Distance Clustering. JMLR, 2021.
• Leo L. Duan. High-Accuracy Posterior Approximation via Random Transport. JASA, 2021.
• Leo L. Duan. Latent Simplex Position Model. JMLR, 2020.
• Leo L. Duan, Alex Young, Akihiko Nishimura, and David B. Dunson. Bayesian Constraint Relaxation. Biometrika 2019.
• Leo L. Duan, James E. Johndrow, and David B. Dunson. Scaling up Data Augmentation MCMC via Calibration. JMLR, 2018.

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 2024, Joint Statistical Meetings, Portland OR

June 2024, International Symposium on Nonparametric Statistics, Braga Portugal

January 2024, Seminar Talk at Duke University, Department of Statistical Science

December 2023, Seminar Talk at University of Washington, Department of Statistics

May 2023, Seminar Talk at Harvard University, Department of Biostatistics

January 2023, Seminar Talk at Texas A&M University, Department of Statistics

October 2022, International Conference on Bayesian Nonparametrics in Puerto Varas, Chile

Current PhD Students

Cheng Zeng (Expected to graduate in Spring 2025)

Zeyu Yuwen (Expected to graduate in Spring 2025)

Yu Zheng

Yaozhi Yang

Past Trainees

Maoran Xu (Assistant Professor, Indiana University)

Eleni Dilma (Biostatistician, Food and Drug Administration)

Edric Tam (Postdoctoral Fellow, Stanford University)

Contact Info

PhD student interested in working with us? Send me an email! li dot duan at ufl dot edu

Publications

For the up-to-date list of publications and pre-prints, see https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=4i5UQLAAAAAJ&hl=en