In elementary and high school, I loved mathematics. As an undergraduate in university, I took mostly math and computer science courses. I found that math got to be too abstract for my liking and computer science seemed concerned with little details- trying to save a microsecond or a kilobyte in a computation. In statistics I found a subject that combined the beauty of both math and computer science, using them to solve real-world problems.

Today statistics is more important that ever, because of the ease with which we can collect large amounts of data. The challenge is to sort through all of this data and separate out the consistent patterns from the noise. This challenge now touches many areas of science, engineering, medicine, finance, and even the arts. Statistics is a young subject, still finding its way. It is an exciting time to be a statistician because of the enormous computational tools at our disposal. How best to use these tools is a fundamental challenge for our subject and the focus of my research.