New Assistant Professor of Computational Statistics

Prof. Dr Sina Mews has held the position of Assistant Professor of Computational Statistics at the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Göttingen since 1 March 2026.

Her research focuses on the statistical modelling of sequential observations underpinned by latent - i.e. not directly observable - processes. To this end, she develops methods for doubly stochastic processes, with a particular focus on latent Markov models (primarily hidden Markov models, state-space models, and Markov-modulated Poisson processes). Currently, for example, she is working on modelling interactions between two individuals using interacting Markov chains, with the aim of representing the influence of personality and environmental factors on these interactions in an interpretable manner. A key focus of her methodological work is also on continuous-time models, which are particularly well-suited to data collected irregularly or in real time - such as health or sensor data.

In addition, she conducts application-driven data analyses within interdisciplinary collaborations spanning various fields, including ecology, psychology, sport and health research. For example, she models animal behaviour over time to draw conclusions about individual adaptation to habitats, or analyses momentum in sports data - such as in tennis matches - based on point sequences and the length of rallies. The specific challenges posed by such applications - such as irregular observation times or complex dependency structures - in turn motivate and drive her methodological research.

Her research has been published in peer-reviewed international journals, including "The Annals of Applied Statistics", "Statistics in Medicine" and "Statistical Modelling". In addition, Sina Mews regularly reviews articles for journals such as "Methods in Ecology and Evolution", "Biometrical Journal" and "European Journal of Operational Research" and is a member of research networks such as the National Centre for Statistical Ecology and the Statistical Modelling Society.

In the summer semester of 2026, the Chair will be offering a four-hour introductory course entitled ‘Data Science: Statistics’. In addition to the fundamental statistical methods and their underlying assumptions, the lecture will also address the practical application and implementation of the methods taught - where possible, using real-world data problems. In the following winter semester, the Master’s lecture “Stochastic Processes” will be offered, amongst other courses.

Before moving to Göttingen, Sina Mews was a research assistant at Bielefeld University, most recently in the Statistics and Data Analysis group and in the Collaborative Research Centre “A Novel Synthesis of Individualisation across Behaviour, Ecology and Evolution”. She studied at Dortmund Technical University and at Bielefeld University, where she was awarded her PhD in 2023 on the topic of “Continuous-time latent-state models for irregularly sampled sequential data”.