DEPARTMENT OF STATISTICS AND DATA SCIENCE

Research Interests

Space-time analysis for serially dependent data; Nonlinear time-series modeling and threshold models for serially correlated, nonstationary, heteroscedastic, count time-series data and continuous time-series data; Spatio-temporal change-point and anomaly detection; Statistical inference for infectious diseases and epidemiology; Statistical ecology; Statistical applications to biomedical research/psychology/sociology; Environmental research; Qualitative statistics; Small sample size methods; Astro AI; Multimodal large language models; Foundation models; AI4Science; Benchmarking inference and Uncertainty quantification.

Research Statement

My research interests focus on introducing and developing new statistical linear and nonlinear (including threshold) models/approaches for panels of nonstationary, serially correlated, heteroscedastic, count and continuous time-series data. My work is both, theoretical and applied in nature. Through cross-disciplinary collaborations, these advanced and often new statistical methodologies are tailored to each specific application with the aim of explaining the dynamics of complex biological systems, in the areas of infectious diseases and epidemiology, statistical ecology, and biomedical research, to name a few. My research is highly cross-disciplinary with work in the following fields: psychology and behavioral sciences, medicine, infectious diseases and epidemiology, social sciences, environmental sciences and ecology, global health, and public policy. Additionally, my research focuses on multimodal large language models, foundation models, in addition to benchmarking inference and uncertainty quantification, with application to AI4Science. Recently, through the newly funded NSF-Simons SkAI institute, I collaborate with researchers across disciplines to make contributions to the field of Astro AI and the AI4Science scientific community at large.

Selected Publications

Xu, R., Samia, N.I.†, and Liu, H.† (2026). DS2-INSTRUCT: Domain-Specific Data Synthesis for Large Language Models Instruction Tuning. EACL 2026 findings. †: co-senior authors.

Wu, J., O’Brien, J., Li, J., Krafczyk, M.S., Shah, V.G., Wasserman, A.R., Apley, D.W., Narayan, G., and Samia, N.I. (2026). SELDON: Supernova Explosions Learned by Deep ODE Networks. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-26), Main Technical Track.

Arshad, M., Samia, N., Iqbal, N., Pasha, A., Amjid, U., Ibrahim, R., Khan, W., Nisar, I., and Jehan, F. (2026). Early Infant Gut Dysbiosis Associated with Extended-Spectrum Beta-Lactamase Producing Escherichia coli (ESBL-EC) Colonization in a Low-Resource Setting. Open Forum Infectious Diseases, Volume 13, Issue Supplement 1, January 2026, ofaf695.1730.

Mithal, L.B., Shuai, W., Samia, N., Aron, A., Sajwani, A., Kremer, A., Otero, S., Hartmann, E., and Arshad, M. (2026). Impact of Perinatal Exposure and Colonization by Drug-resistant Enterobacterales on Infant Gut Microbiota. Open Forum Infectious Diseases, Volume 13, Issue Supplement 1, January 2026, ofaf695.1725.

Butler, E.R., Alloy, L.B., Pham, D.D., Samia, N.I., Nusslock, R., and Mejia, A.F. Utility and validity of group atlas versus personalized functional network approaches. Pre-registration paper (2025) https://osf.io/pd6kz/.

Christian, T.E., Subrahmanya, A.N., Gamelin, B., Rao, V., Samia, N.I., and Bessac, J. (2025). A bilevel spatiotemporal clustering approach and its application to drought extraction. Adv. Stat. Clim. Meteorol. Oceanogr. Vol. 11 Issue 2, 257–272. DOI: 10.5194/ascmo-11-257-2025.

Butler, E., Samia, N.I., Mejia, M., Pham, D., Pines, A., and Nusslock, R. (2025). Sex differences in response to violence: role of salience network expansion and connectivity on depression. Transl Psychiatry 15 (427). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-025-03614-x.

Clain AE, Samia N, Davidson K, Martin-Harris B. Characterizing Physiologic Swallowing Impairment Profiles: A Large-Scale Exploratory Study of Head and Neck Cancer, Stroke, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Dementia, and Parkinson's Disease. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2024 Dec 9;67(12):4689-4713. PubMed Central PMCID: PMC11667003.

Samia N, Raife T. Rising total leukocyte counts correspond with rising platelet counts in thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura. Blood Vessels, Thrombosis & Hemostasis. 2024 December 01; 1(4):100024. Available from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S295032722400024X issn: 2950-3272

Samia NI, Stramer O, Saitoh T, Stenseth NC. Climate-driven context-dependent structure of population cycles. R Soc Open Sci. 2024 Aug;11(8):240047. PubMed Central PMCID: PMC11349440.

Butler, E. R., Samia, N., White, S., Gratton, C. and Nusslock, R. (2024). Neuroimmune mechanisms connecting violence with internalizing symptoms: A high-dimensional multimodal mediation analysis. Human Brain Mapping, 45(2), e26615. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.26615

Samia, N.I., Robicsek, A., Heesterbeek, H. and Peterson, L.R. (2022). Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) nosocomial infection has a distinct epidemiological position and acts as a marker for overall hospital infection control trends. Scientific Reports, 12, doi:10.1038/s41598-022-21300-6.

Stefely, J.A., Gailey, M.P., Knudson, C.M., Dumont, L.J., Raife, T.J. and Samia, N.I. (2020). Retrospective cohort studies of repeat donors reveal donor dependent variability in the recovery of transfused platelets. Transfusion, 60 (8): 1837-1845.

Chin, V., Samia, N.I., Marchant, R., Rosen, O., Ioannidis, J.P.A., Tanner, M.A. and Cripps, S. (2020). A case study in model failure? COVID-19 daily deaths and ICU bed utilisation predictions in New York state. European Journal of Epidemiology, 35 (8), 733-742.

Peterson, L.R., Samia, N.I., Skinner, A.M., Chopra, A. and Smith, B. (2017). Antimicrobial Stewardship Lessons From Mupirocin Use and Resistance in Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus. Open Forum Infectious Diseases, 4 (2): ofx093. doi:10.1093/ofid/ofx093.