Dr. Florentina Bunea

Biography

Florentina Bunea is a Professor in the Department of Statistics and Data Science at Cornell University. Her research is broadly centered on statistical machine learning theory and high-dimensional statistical inference. Bunea is dedicated to developing new methodologies accompanied by sharp theoretical foundations to solve a variety of problems in data science. Her recent projects include estimation theory for soft-max mixtures, foundational understanding of LLM/AI algorithms, optimal transport in high-dimensional mixture distributions, and network modeling. She is also interested in model selection, sparsity, and dimension reduction in high dimensions, with applications in genetics, systems immunology, neuroscience, sociology, and economics. With a strong commitment to promoting diversity in the workforce of data science disciplines, she actively serves on the Diversity Inclusion Council. Bunea has received funding from the National Science Foundation and is a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, where she was awarded the IMS Medallion. She is also an Associate Editor for several prestigious journals.

Research Interests

Experience

Awards