Shu-Min's IDEAS Lab

Shu-Min Liao is an Assistant Professor of Statistics at Amherst College, who completed her PhD training in Statistics at Pennsylvania State University in 2009. Her professional career unfortunately got interrupted by life-threatening medical complications in 2013-2018, and she is currently living with multiple disabilities and minority identities – all of which made her a better educator and researcher. Sparked by those unusual lived experiences, Shu-Min is passionate about STEM Education research and DEIAB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Accessibility, and Belong) work, besides Copula theories and modeling for categorical data. She is an active member of ASA Committee on Statistics and Disability (CSD) & JEDI Outreach Group and a faculty facilitator for the “Being Human in STEM” program at Amherst College.
In her free time, Shu-Min enjoys running, yoga, meditation, swimming, biking, reading, playing piano, and having fun with her family in the Happy Valley.

Michelle Contreras-Catalán is a rising junior at Amherst College majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics. She was born and raised in Santiago, Chile, and has always been passionate about using STEM to create a positive impact on society. What first drove Michelle to Computer Science was an astronomy workshop targeted at female-identifying high school students, where they got to analyze data of variable stars with Python. Since then, Michelle has been exploring the different applications of data science, machine learning, and AI. She works in the research and learning group Data Mammoths*, where they are currently implementing different algorithms for statistically-sound knowledge.
As a long-term goal, Michelle looks forward to creating and applying technology with a human-centered approach while tackling issues related to education or health through the lens of computer science.
When she's not writing code or doing math, she likes to spend her time taking pictures, dancing, hanging out with her friends, and hiking.

Megan Huang studies computer science and philosophy at Amherst College but loves exploring interdisciplinary subjects. Megan is excited to explore both fields and potential areas of overlap—she has worked on stoic metaphysics as Professor Vanessa de Harven's research assistant and was also a research member in Professor Lee Spector's artificial intelligence research group focusing on evolutionary computation. As a Lyle A. McGeoch Fellow, she has also helped teach courses in the computer science department, including Data Structures and Introduction to Computer Science I. At Amherst, Megan is the President of the Badminton Club and Website Director of the Amherst Stem Network. She develops and maintains Professor Shu-Min Liao's website. In her professional life, Megan interns at Centene Corporation as a software developer.
Megan enjoys growing plants, creating art, building mechanical keyboards, and playing the violin in her free time.

Dhyey Dharmendrakumar Mavani is a student triple-majoring in Computer Science, Mathematics, and Statistics as part of the class of 2025 at Amherst College. Apart from having the experience of working in big tech companies like Amazon and HP Tech Ventures as a software development engineer and business analyst, respectively, he has served as a teaching assistant, research assistant, and peer tutor in the Computer Science, Mathematics and Statistics, and Economics departments at Amherst College. Over Spring -Fall 2022, Dhyey served as a founding full-stack software engineer for RBlocks and led the full development process until deployment under Professor Liao's guidance. Furthermore, over Summer 2022, he also mentored the Python project group under Professor Liao's guidance.
If you catch him outside of work and school, Dhyey is an adventurous traveler and an avid lover of archery and badminton! He has won multiple singles and doubles tournaments in badminton and is the best badminton player on campus in both formats. He also holds four badges and two champion titles in archery through USA Archery's Junior Olympic Archery Development (JOAD) program in both indoor and outdoor formats.

Mahathi Athreya is a Statistics and Economics student at Amherst College. She helped Shu-Min create STAT136 and was a TA for the course as well. Apart from her time grading for the Math/Stats department and helping Shu-Min refine STAT136 materials, Mahathi is an avid Indian classical singer and dancer. She has a passion to apply statistics and economics to marine and environmental science, and will be working at MassMutual in strategic planning over the summer.

Angelica Sang is an undergraduate student at Amherst College pursuing a degree in Statistics. As a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) participant, she began investigating and becoming passionate about equity in STEM education. With Prof. Shu-Min Liao as her mentor, Angelica continues researching pedagogical techniques that promote accessibility to a statistics, data science, or coding education. Outside of her coursework and research, Angelica is a member of the Mathematics & Statistics Student Steering Committee, a group focused on supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion within the College’s Mathematics & Statistics department. Beginning in the Fall of 2023, she will join the Center for Teaching and Learning as a member of the Student Advisory Team.
In her free time, Angelica loves, reading, swimming, yoga, hiking, and spending time with her family in New York.

April Dottin-Carter is a recent graduate of Amherst College, where she earned dual bachelor's degrees in Computer Science and Religion. With a strong passion for web programming, she discovered her love for the subject during a high school course at Harvard. Throughout her time at Amherst, April's expertise and dedication led her to create this beautiful website for Shu-Min Liao. During her time at Amherst, April held leadership positions within the Women in Computer Science Club, serving as the club president for two years and later taking on the roles of website manager and newsletter manager. Now, as April embarks on her professional journey, she has secured a position as a front-end software engineer at Slack Inc.
Beyond her academic pursuits, she indulges in her passion for travel, having backpacked across five continents and explored 13 countries so far. Embracing the nomadic lifestyle, April is currently engrossed in designing and constructing her own tiny house using a shipping container. This unique project aligns with her aspiration to become a self-sufficient digital nomad, enabling her to travel the world while striving for a sustainable lifestyle rooted in environmental consciousness.

Tracy is a recent psychology-major graduate of Amherst College. She originally took Shu-Min’s Intermediate Statistics course over Zoom during COVID, and loved the self-care component that Shu-Min incorporated since this was the first time a professor emphasized mental health in a course. Since then, she has helped Shu-Min develop a new introductory statistics course at Amherst (Happy Intro Stats) that incorporates discussions of mental health in learning materials. Most recently, she has assisted Shu-Min in a new project about Likert data analysis by conducting a literature review of past empirical articles on the topic. She will be pursuing a career in public health (epidemiology and biostatistics) at Emory Rollins School of Public Health after Amherst, and is excited to continue applying statistics and quantitative, data-driven methods to healthcare problems!
In her free time, Tracy enjoys reading, watching Netflix shows, singing, and spending time with her family, cat, and friends.

Kevin Jin is a class of 2023 student at Amherst College majoring in mathematics and statistics. He first got interested in using statistics for various sports analytics projects and later used the skills gained from these passion projects to work on a DSC-WAV research project with Professor Nick Horton. From his DSC-WAV experience, Kevin became interested in pursuing more advanced methods people can do to deal with categorical and ordinal/Likert data in survey data. Toward this goal, Kevin worked with Professor Shu-Min Liao on his senior thesis topic to create a new visualization tool using Checkerboard Copula theory and copula regression to help find and gain insights into the interactions of variables in high-dimensional contingency table data.
Outside of statistics, Kevin enjoys reading books and hanging out with friends in his free time. He also enjoys teaching and helping others through his work as a fellow for the Mathematics and Statistics department.

Kenny Chen is currently a Master's candidate in biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is interested in how statistics can be applied in a public health context and is especially interested in the fields of nutrition, mental health, and maternal and child health. This summer, he will be interning at Boston Children's Hospital where he will be studying spinal injuries in children. During his time at Amherst, he double majored in mathematics and statistics and was a part of the Amherst Choral society.
In his free time, he enjoys playing his guitar, watching K-dramas, and playing volleyball.

Majd Rouhana is a recent statistics-major graduate of Amherst College. He currently works within Northeastern University's College of Science as the undergraduate student services and data manager for the cooperative education department.
While at Amherst, he worked alongside Professor Shu-Min Liao as a Gregory S. Call Academic Intern. He contributed to Professor Shu-Min Liao's journal article, "SCRATCH to R: Toward an Inclusive Pedagogy in Teaching Coding," created interactive SCRATCH and R tutorials for students of STAT-230, and helped with research for the current RBlocks project.