Honoring Eric Chi

May is Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month in the U.S., a commemorative month to recognize the historical and cultural contributions of Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and Native Hawaiians. To celebrate, SIAM is featuring Dr. Eric Chi, an accomplished applied mathematician and professor from the SIAM community. We encourage you to take a moment to read through this spotlight and learn more about our commitment to our community. 

Biography

Dr. Eric Chi is an associate professor in the department of statistics at Rice University, a position he has held since 2021. He received a Ph.D. in statistics from Rice University, after which he completed postdoctoral positions in the human genetics department at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Digital Signal Processing group at Rice. Prior to joining Rice, he was an assistant professor in the department of statistics at North Carolina State University. His current research interests are in statistical learning and numerical optimization. He aims to develop practical computational tools for data analysis with rigorous performance guarantees, especially performance criteria essential for reproducibility like stability and convergence. He works on methodology and applications, collaborating with computational biologists, engineers, theoretical statisticians, computer scientists, and pure and applied mathematicians. 

Additionally, Dr. Chi has received accolades including the 2017 Oak Ridge Associated Universities Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award and an NSF CAREER award (2018). He is an active member of the American Statistical Association, and currently serves as an associate editor of the Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics. He also has been on the editorial board of Statistical Methods in Medical Research since 2011. Learn more about Dr. Chi.

With SIAM being a professional home of his, Dr. Chi has been an active member for 15 years. He was first introduced to SIAM as an awardee of the Department of Energy (DOE) Computational Sciences Graduate Fellowship. As part of this program, he completed three practica in the DOE National Labs, Lawrence Berkeley and Sandia. Through these experiences, he acquired scientific computing and software development skills, learning how to design algorithms that behaved well on paper but also admitted practical implementations. Over the years, Dr. Chi has been a member of the SIAM Activity Groups on Data Science, Optimization, and Uncertainty Quantification, as well as a co-chair of the organizing committee of the 2024 SIAM Conference on Mathematics of Data Science. SIAM’s conferences on Computational Science and Engineering and Mathematics of Data Science have become significant parts of Dr. Chi’s communities, and as his interest in computation grows, he relies on SIAM to keep up with major advances in the field.

As advice to early career professionals, Dr. Chi points to his experiences at the national laboratories as pivotal in shaping his career, noting how valuable they were during his time as a student, and encourages others to take advantage of similar opportunities. He states that the experience was, “a balance of important, practical problems and strong mathematics, and if you want to see everything come together, getting an opportunity to work at a national lab can be very formative.”

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