Nalini Ravishanker

Professor, University of Connecticut Department of Statistics

Nalini Ravishanker grew up with her grandparents in Chennai (formerly, Madras) India, where she was affectionately raised by a huge extended family. Her schooling was in Rosary Matriculation, and some friendships from there have endured until today. She completed her undergraduate degree at Presidency College, Madras, majoring in statistics because she thought it would be a practical subject for a young person enjoying mathematics.

“Attending inspiring talks at the University of Madras by leading statisticians and quiet hours of enjoyment studying in the library of the nearby Ramanujan Institute stimulated my interest in going for a PhD in statistics and maybe continuing to learn forever,” Ravishanker said. She joined her husband (who was a PhD candidate in theoretical chemistry) in New York and entered the PhD program in the New York University Department of Statistics and Operations Research. After four years, a fellowship, her first paper, and her first son, she earned a PhD in statistics, focusing on the application of differential geometrical methods to time series. Looking back, she says she is so grateful to all her professors, both in India and in the US, who taught and advised excellently, while never curtailing her freedom to grow independently in many directions.

After her PhD, Ravishanker spent an interesting and informative year at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center at Yorktown Heights, where she learned firsthand from top-notch scientists on how to do interesting data analysis founded on sound theory. That experience sealed her love for methods and applied statistics, which she has continued to pursue throughout her academic career.

Ravishanker joined the University of Connecticut Department of Statistics as an assistant professor in 1989 and remains there as a full professor today. While raising two boys, she also served for several years as the department’s undergraduate program director and faculty coordinator for UConn’s early college experience program.

Ravishanker is passionate about research, teaching, advising, and mentoring both graduates and undergraduates. She enjoys teaching statistical theory, methods, computing, and applications at different levels. While her research has been primarily focused on time series modeling and analysis, she has always enjoyed solving problems, developing new methods, and exploring new applications in many domains. She enjoys contributing to UConn’s master’s in data science program. She is invested in interdisciplinary research and is especially proud of the collaborative body of work in transportation safety and marine sciences. She enjoys her editorial activities for journals (International Statistical Review and Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry) and consulting with industry. “And, of course, I wish a day had more than 24 hours,” she said.

Ravishanker is proud of her research and teaching contributions in time series modeling and forecasting. She is proud of her students, who have worked hard to create fulfilling lives with interesting careers. She is also proud of her ongoing engagements in global capacity-building in statistics and data science and looks forward to enhancing these in the next few years, particularly in her roles within the International Statistical Institute.