#  Yi Zhang Receives 2024 NESS Student Research Award  

 





June 13, 2024

 

 

 The Department of Statistics congratulates PhD student Yi Zhang on receiving the [Student Research Award at the 37th New England Statistics Symposium](https://symposium.nestat.org/awards.html), hosted this year at the University of Connecticut from May 20 - 24, 2024. The Award Committee selected Yi based on her paper "[Individualized Policy Evaluation and Learning under Clustered Network Interference](https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__arxiv.org_abs_2311.02467&d=DwMFaQ&c=WO-RGvefibhHBZq3fL85hQ&r=ja-uJz6cXHuTu0eP7LkyBR-9dB17WxBpHTZKK0ZMBA4&m=v21GyfRBgqKykpfC-c5vpyDt-nMlyN676n03wvsNmhtDDBFfwusdY-umm8TkYGe8&s=a5-bcKhLpnm2HRgo4RArB3H-AAcM9cAGCuIC7lGArlQ&e=)," co-authored with Professor Kosuke Imai. In this research project, Yi addresses the challenge of effectively evaluating and learning an optimal individualized treatment rule (ITR) under the setting of clustered network interference, where clusters of units are sampled from a population and units may influence one another within a cluster. Specifically, Yi proposes a semiparametric structural model that enables flexible heterogeneous spillover effects and an estimator that effectively improves the evaluation performance of an ITR.

 The NESS symposium is an annual event designed to bring together statisticians to share their research and network with the statistical community. Each year, the NESS Award Committee honors a handful of PhD students based on the "overall quality" of their research. Yi Zhang and other awardees were acknowledged for their work and received a plaque at the conference.