About

I'm a senior at Duke University studying mathematics and statistics. I am primarily interested in statistical genetics, missing data, survey statistics, differential privacy and applications to the biomedical and social sciences. On the more mathematical side, I have a growing interest in high-dimensional probability and related topics (concentration, random matrices, etc.).

At Duke, I am currently working with Profs. Jerry Reiter, Jichun Xie and Nicholas Cook. I previously worked for Prof. Chris Bail in the Duke Polarization Lab.

Outside of research, I have a strong interest in journalism. I served as news editor for The Chronicle, Duke's independent newspaper, and have a particular interest in covering administrative actions and their associated impact on students and other members of the Duke community.

I am an avid basketball fan and work on the creative team for Duke Men’s Basketball.

Research

Papers

1. Wadekar, A.S. and Reiter, J.P. (2024). “Evaluating binary outcome classifiers estimated from survey data,” Epidemiology (forthcoming). arXiv: 2311.00596.
2. Wadekar, A.S. (2020). “A psychosocial approach to predicting substance use disorder (SUD) among adolescents.” In Proceedings of IEEE/ACM Intl. Conf. on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining, 819-826.
3. Wadekar, A.S. (2020). “Understanding Opioid Use Disorder using tree-based classifiers.” Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 208, 107839.

Ongoing projects

1. Defining polyexposomic risk scores and developing estimation methods using summary statistics.
2. Differential privacy and verification of parameters using Bayesian prediction intervals.
3. Testing for geometry in random simplicial complexes constructed in negatively curved spaces.
4. Applying statistical knockoffs to detect (causal) common variants in genome-wide association studies.

Journalism

Below is a selection of my recent clips.

• Students frustrated after Global Education Office introduces caps on Duke-approved study abroad programs, November 2023.
• Duke launches review into Center for Documentary Studies after 20 months of resignations, layoffs and program cuts, April 2023.
• How a Duke professor’s research may change the face of college admissions in the US, November 2022.
• ‘Ready to fly’: Stories and scenes from the Class of 2027’s move-in day, August 2023.
• ‘How loved she was’: Peaches’ caretakers reflect on beloved calico cat’s legacy at Duke, August 2022.
• ‘Political meddling from on high’: AAUP, faculty condemn University of North Carolina System leadership, June 2022.
• ‘Actively engaged in shutting us down’: Thompson Writing Program faculty continue fight for renewability, February 2022.