Mei Wang

Department of Statistics The University of Chicago

Research interests

In applications, I am interested in probabilistic models and related statistical methods with applications in biological and physical sciences. In particular, I am interested in models that require mathematical and probabilistic formulation to characterize biological mechanisms. A few topics I have worked on are: formulation of probabilistic models and simulations to characterize the inheritance mechanism for a non-Mendelian species, construction of a mathematical procedure based on graph theory for life cycle analysis in population biology, formulation and analysis of population structure in fishery, and derivation of measures of shape similarity needed in simulations of nature patterns. These applications are related and often arise from environmental studies related to climate changes.

 

In the theoretical aspect, I have been involved in studying analytic properties of differential equations, in particular those related to uniqueness of solutions and characteristics of harmonic functions which have an important role in probability theory. I am also interested in quantum statistical inference and potential applications of non-commutative probability.

 

Recent publications and manuscripts   (on MathSciNet )

• Pan, Y., Wang, M, and Yan, Y. (2013)   A Hopf's lemma for higher order differential inequalities and its applications (submitted)
• Pan, Y., Wang, M, and Yan, Y. (2012)   Uniqueness theorem for ordinary differential equations with Holder continuity, Pacific. J. Math. 2012 (to appear)
• Pan, Y. and Wang, M. (2010)   Uniqueness of nth order differential systems with strong singularity, Electron. J. Diff. Eqns. 2010(172): 1-9.
• Ma, L., Stein, M. L. , Wang M., Shelton, A. O., Pfister, C. A., and Wilder, K. J. (2010)   A method for unbiased estimation of population abundance along curvy margins, Environmetrics DOI: 10.1002/env.1053.
• Pan, Y. and Wang, M. (2010)   An application of Hardy-Littlewood Tauberian Theorem to harmonic expansion of a complex measure, Real Analysis Exchange 35(2): 517-524.
• Pan, Y. and Wang, M. (2009)   A uniqueness result on ordinary differential equations with singular coefficients, Electron. J. Diff. Eqns. 2009(56): 1-6.
• Bever, J. D., Kang, H., Kaonongbua, W. and Wang, M. (2008)   Genomic organization and mechanisms of inheritance in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi: contrasting the evidence and implications of current theories Mycorrhiza (A. Varma Ed.): 135-148. Springer-Verlag.
• Pan, Y. and Wang, M. (2008)   On higher order angular derivatives - an application of Faà di Bruno's formula, Complex Variables and Elliptic Equations 53 (2): 159-175.
• Pan, Y. and Wang, M. (2008)   When is a function not flat?   Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications 340 (1): 536-542.
• Pan, Y. and Wang, M. (2007)   Monotonicity of Harnack inequality for positive invariant harmonic functions, Journal of Applied Mathematics and Stochastic Analysis 2007:  doi:10.1155/2007/39171.
• Heller, B. and Wang, M. (2007) Posterior distribution for negative binomial parameter p using a group invariant prior (publication DOI) (author's pdf) Statistics and Probability Letters 77: 1542-1548.  
• Sun, L. and Wang, M. (2007)   An algorithm for a decomposition of weighted digraphs --- with applications to life cycle analysis in ecology (original publication) (author's pdf) Journal of Mathematical Biology 54: 199-226.
• Heller, B. and Wang, M. (2006)   Group invariant inferred distributions via noncommutative probability. Institute of Mathematical Statistics, Lecture Notes and Monograph Series 50: 1-19.
• Bever, J. D. and Wang, M. (2005)   Hyphal fusion and multigenomic structure. Nature 433 (7022): E3-E4.
• Pfister, C. and Wang, M. (2005)   Beyond Size: matrix projection models for populations where size is an incomplete descriptor. Ecology 86 (10): 2673-2683.