After many months SAMSI is proud to welcome their newest Deputy Director, Elvan Ceyhan.
Ceyhan, who was a visiting associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh in 2016, joined the SAMSI directorate in July this year. He joins the SAMSI team and will also serve as a research associate professor of the Department of Statistics at North Carolina State University (NCSU). He replaces former Deputy Director, Sujit Ghosh, who is currently a Professor of Statistics in the same department at NCSU.
Ceyhan, a Turkish native, received his undergraduate education and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Koc University (KU) in Istanbul, Turkey. In 1997, he came to the United States and originally attended Oklahoma State University’s (OSU) Ph.D. Program in Mathematics, before changing his mind and switching to their statistics master’s program. He went on to receive his Master of Science degree in Statistics from OSU in 2000. That same year, Ceyhan began the Ph.D. program in the Applied Mathematics and Statistics Department at Johns Hopkins University – he went on to receive his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 2004.
From 2004 to 2005, Ceyhan worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Imaging Science at Johns Hopkins. After his time at Johns Hopkins, he returned to Turkey and served as an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics at KU until 2011, when he was promoted to an associate professorship. Ceyhan served in that capacity until 2016, when he went to the University of Pittsburgh for the visiting associate professor post. Throughout his academic career, he has (co) authored almost 50 journal articles and given numerous talks and presentations.
What Ceyhan enjoys most about applied mathematics and statistics is data analysis, finding hidden patterns and studying trends in data. “I was always good in math in primary school,” he said. “I entered the university as a physics major and a year later, realized I liked math better, so I switched.”
Ceyhan is easy going and enjoys working with members of the SAMSI directorate, the staff and postdoctoral fellows and visitors that attend the institute. After Elvan took the position, he decided the best thing to do was to pick up where his predecessors had left off in order to increase awareness of how SAMSI supports applied math and statistics fields.
“I would like to continue our conventions and contribute more effort towards diversity in our programs,” said Ceyhan. He also believes SAMSI needs to continue to support heavily data science and big data programs, as these topics are major points of interest in the statistics community.
“I would like to continue our conventions and contribute more effort towards diversity in our programs,” said Ceyhan. He also believes SAMSI needs to continue to support heavily data science and big data programs, as these topics are major points of interest in the statistics community.
Among his many goals as deputy director, Ceyhan will work to expand education and outreach initiatives, support undergraduate workshops and programs and serve as an advisor to postdoctoral fellows in order to help them advance their research and academic careers.
Ceyhan resides with his wife, of nearly 10 years and his two children, daughter Gokce and son Melih. His family moved with him in 2016 when he took the visiting associate professor position in Pittsburgh. The family still misses Turkey and they hope to get back to the country next year to visit.
Ceyhan enjoys watching soccer and studying ancient history in his spare time. SAMSI is glad to have him in this new leadership role within the organization.