UCSD Math for Statistics?

[mathfriend]

Does anyone have any knowledge about Statistics at UC San Diego? I see that they offer a PhD in Math with Specialization in Stats, but there appear to be only 6 faculty doing Stats research, so I'm a little apprehensive that my opportunities might be limited there. My research interests are many: high-dimensional stats, machine learning, causal inference, spatio-temporal data and climate applications.

[Stat Assistant Professor]

46 minutes ago, mathfriend said:

Does anyone have any knowledge about Statistics at UC San Diego? I see that they offer a PhD in Math with Specialization in Stats, but there appear to be only 6 faculty doing Stats research, so I'm a little apprehensive that my opportunities might be limited there. My research interests are many: high-dimensional stats, machine learning, causal inference, spatio-temporal data and climate applications.

UCSD Mathematics has some great statistics faculty, particularly for high-dimensional statistics and ML. Many of them seem to be publishing in the top statistics journals and ML conferences, so you could do quite well there if you were to go to UCSD and be supervised by one of these professors. There are also a lot of great faculty in the UCSD Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute whom you can work with as a PhD student, and that can also help set you up well for a career (academic or non-academic) later.

I don't think your opportunities would be limited if you were to go there, to be honest. There are some excellent mathematics departments that house statistics within them, and I would count UCSD as one of them.