Dootika Vats

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dootika at iitk.ac.in

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics and Data Science at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. Previously, I was an NSF Postdocotoral fellow with Prof. Gareth Roberts at the University of Warwick. My PhD was from the University of Minnesota, Twin-Cities working with Prof. Galin Jones.

My research interests are: Markov chain Monte Carlo, output analysis for stochastic simulation. Recently, I’ve also been interested in stochastic optimization algorithms.

I serve as an Associate Editor for Bayesian Analysis, Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference, and Sankhya B.

Students: If you’re interesed in working with me, see team tab.

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news

Jul 12, 2026 Dwija Kakkad’s first paper on Exact MCMC for Intractable Proposals has been accepted in the Japanese Journal of Statistics and Data Science. Dwija did her BS in Mathematics and Scientific Computing at IIT Kanpur and is currently pursuing a PhD in Statistics at Duke University.
Jul 01, 2026 Arghya Mukherjee’s paper on Scalable Bayesian Inference for High-dimensional Mixed-type Multivariate Spatial Data has been accepted in Spatial Statistics. This is joint work with Arnab Hazra.
Jun 11, 2026 Absolutely thrilled to share that I have moved to the newly formed Department of Statistics and Data Science at IIT Kanpur! Although the department is new, I will continue to teach and mentor the same students. It’s exciting times at IIT Kanpur!
May 30, 2026 Arghya Mukherjee’s first paper, Hamiltonian Monte Carlo for (Physics) Dummies has been accepted for publication in Statistics and Applications, in a special edition on Recent Advances in Bayesian Statistics and Machine Learning.
May 19, 2026 Honored to be chosen as an INSA Young Associate for 2026 in the Mathematical Sciences!