Cristiano Villa

Prof. Cristiano Villa main research area is in Bayesian statistics, with particular interest in objective methods. His output has been published in several peer-reviewed journals and presented at international conferences, such as the ISBA International Conference, the O-Bayes conference, and the ERCIM conference. In addition to his research, Prof. Villa is deeply committed to teaching and enjoys interacting with students. His teaching interests include probability, statistics, linear modelling, and risk management. Before joining Duke Kunshan University (DKU), Prof. Villa was a member of the Newcastle University (UK) and the University of Kent (UK). Prior to joining academia in 2014, he worked as an auditor and as an advisor for KPMG in several countries, including, Italy, UK, New Zealand, and Singapore. He holds an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. from the University of Kent, UK.

Current Appointments & Affiliations

Associate Professor of Statistics at Duke Kunshan University · 2023 - Present DKU Faculty

Associate Professor of the Practice of Interdisciplinary Studies at DKU Unit at Duke University · 2026 - Present Interdisciplinary Studies at DKU Unit, DKU Faculty

Recent Publications

Beta-CoRM: A Bayesian approach for n-gram profiles analysis

Journal Article Computational Statistics and Data Analysis · February 1, 2025 n-gram profiles have been successfully and widely used to analyse long sequences of potentially differing lengths for clustering or classification. Mainly, machine learning algorithms have been used for this purpose but, despite their predictive performanc ... Full text Open Access Cite

A multidimensional objective prior distribution from a scoring rule

Journal Article Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference · July 1, 2024 The construction of objective priors is, at best, challenging for multidimensional parameter spaces. A common practice is to assume independence and set up the joint prior as the product of marginal distributions obtained via “standard” objective methods, ... Full text Open Access Cite

Optimal square-root pooling from expert opinions

Journal Article Statistics and Probability Letters · May 1, 2024 The paper proposes a novel approach to combine expert prior opinions based on information minimization. This is done in the square-root density space, identified with the positive orthant of the Hilbert unit sphere of differentiable functions. ... Full text Open Access Cite

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Education, Training & Certifications

University of Kent (United Kingdom) · 2014 Ph.D.