Ph.D. student Gaurav Agarwal wins best student paper award
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KAUST Ph.D. student Gaurav Agarwal recently won the best student paper award at the International Indian Statistical Association's 2019 Student Paper Competition. Photo by Khulud Muath.
-By David Murphy, KAUST News
Gaurav Agarwal, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in KAUST Associate Professor Ying Sun's Environmental Statistics (ES) research group, recently won the best student paper award at the International Indian Statistical Association (IISA) 2019 Student Paper Competition for his paper titled "Bivariate Functional Quantile Envelopes with Application to Radiosonde Wind Data." Agarwal received his award at the 2019 IISA Conference on Innovations in Data and Statistical Sciences, which was held in Mumbai, India, from December 26 to 30, 2019.Agarwal also received a R@IISA Conference Scholarship based on his contributions using R—a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics—and the use of R in scientific/industrial research.
"I was delighted to receive the student paper award and the R Scholarship from the IISA," Agarwal stated. "I feel honored that the international statistical community recognized our research, and I feel motivated to do equally interesting research projects in the future."
"It was very exciting to attend the IISA conference in Mumbai and present my work, as well as [for me to] explore the latest developments and challenges in data science and statistical learning," he added.
"The R Conference at IISA seeks to bring together R users and data scientists from academia and industry to discuss and showcase applications of R in education, research and elsewhere," Agarwal continued. "The conference provides student scholarships to deserving participants based on the contributions using R in scientific research or industry ."
Environmental statistics student Gaurav Agarwal received his best student paper award at the International Indian Statistical Association's Conference on Innovations in Data and Statistical Sciences in December 2019 in Mumbai. Image courtesy of Gaurav Agarwal.
Developing an effective visualization tool
Agarwal's winning paper was based on the ES group's study of the joint distribution of wind speed and direction along several pressure levels. The ES team developed an effective visualization tool to demonstrate the features of this bivariate functional data. The data gathered by the researchers can be subsequently used in several climate and weather prediction models.
"We also focus on quality control of this substantial data by detecting bivariate outliers using our robust methods. The proposed methods can predict the bivariate distribution of the wind in parts of the atmosphere where no radiosonde observations are available," Agarwal noted.
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Gaurav Agarwal credits the support his supervisor, KAUST Associate Professor Ying Sun, for enabling him to receive his student paper award. Photo by Khulud Muath.
Thriving programming skills
Before joining KAUST in 2016, Agarwal obtained his bachelor's degree in statistics from Hindu College, Delhi, and his master's degree in statistics from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur. His current research focuses on developing statistical methods with environmental applications, such as the mechanisms responsible for salt tolerance in plants.
Agarwal believes that a combination of factors, including the unwavering support of his supervisor, Ying Sun, coupled with the impactful nature of the facilities found on campus, have greatly influenced his successful research output.
"I would like to credit...Professor Ying Sun for the student paper award, as it would not have been possible without her guidance," he said. "Professor Sun conceived the project and supervised the study. Thanks to the excellent resources of KAUST, running simulations was fast and easy on the powerful workstations. Regarding the R Scholarship, the knowledge gained from the courses and the esteemed faculty of KAUST helped me develop my R programming skills."