Dr. David Hunter

Biography

David R. Hunter is a Professor of Statistics at Penn State University. He earned his Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Michigan in 1999 and holds a mathematics degree from Princeton University (1992). His career includes teaching mathematics at a public high school in New Hampshire before joining Penn State in 1999. Hunter has made significant contributions to the field of Computational Statistics, particularly in Network Analysis and Mixture Models. He served as the head of the Department of Statistics from 2012 to 2018. An accomplished researcher, Hunter published widely on statistical models and networks, co-creating the 'statnet' suite of packages for network analysis in R and coining the term 'MM algorithms'. His work has focused on the extension of computational practices in unsupervised clustering using nonparametric finite mixture models. Hunter's honors include being a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, an Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute, and a co-recipient of the Richards Software Award from the International Network for Social Networks Analysis. He has also been a Faculty Fellow at Penn State’s Teaching and Learning Technology and a Research Fellow at Le Studium in France.

Research Interests

Courses