About
Genevera Allen is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Statistics, and Computer Science at Rice University and an investigator at the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine. She is also the Founding Director of the Rice Center for Transforming Data to Knowledge, informally called the Rice D2K Lab.
Dr. Allen’s research develops new statistical machine learning tools to help people make reliable data-driven discoveries. She is known for her methods and theory work in the areas of unsupervised learning, interpretable machine learning, data integration, graphical models, and high-dimensional statistics. Her work is motivated by solving real scientific problems, especially in the areas of neuroscience and bioinformatics. Dr. Allen is also a leader in data science education. In 2018, she founded the Rice D2K Lab, a campus hub for experiential learning and data science education. Through her leadership of the D2K Lab, Dr. Allen developed new interdisciplinary data science degree programs, established a novel capstone program in data science and machine learning, and led Rice’s engagement with corporate and community partners in data science.
Dr. Allen is the recipient of several honors for both her research and educational efforts including a National Science Foundation Career Award, Rice University’s Duncan Achievement Award for Outstanding Faculty, the Curriculum Innovation Award, and the School of Engineering’s Research and Teaching Excellence Award. In 2014, she was named to the “Forbes ’30 under 30′: Science and Healthcare” list. She is also an elected member of the International Statistics Institute and an elected fellow of the American Statistical Association. Dr. Allen currently serves as an Action Editor for the Journal of Machine Learning Research, an Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Statistical Association: Theory and Methods, and a Series Editor for Springer Texts in Statistics. Dr. Allen received her Ph.D. in statistics from Stanford University, under the mentorship of Prof. Robert Tibshirani, and her bachelors, also in statistics, from Rice University.
Education
Ph.D., Statistics, Stanford University (2010)
B.A., Statistics, Rice University (2006)
Selected Honors & Awards
- Elected Fellow, American Statistical Association, 2022.
- Elected Member, International Statistics Institute, 2021.
- Charles W. Duncan Achievement Award for Outstanding Faculty, Rice University, 2021.
- Curriculum Innovation Award, George R. Brown School of Engineering, Rice University, 2020.
- Research and Teaching Excellence Award, George R. Brown School of Engineering, Rice University, 2017.
- NSF Career Award, 2016.
- Forbes 30 under 30: Science & Healthcare, 2014.