Hello everybody! Welcome to my website!

I'm Mike Van Ness, PhD candidate in Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University, with expected graduation in June 2025. I'm fortunate to be advised by Madeleine Udell, who also advised me as a Statistics PhD student at Cornell before our move to Stanford. My research at Stanford primarily involves interpretable machine learning methods, with particular focus on survival analysis and healthcare applications. Outside of research, I am passionate about teaching and mentoring: I have been a teaching assistant for many courses, and am very excited to be the primary instructor for MS&E 125: Introduction to Applied Statistics for Spring 2025. I also have done summer internships at Amazon and Uber during my PhD, and am currently in the market for full-time opportunities in technology.

In my free time, I enjoy playing geoguessr and chess, as well as hiking, running, golfing, ultimate frisbee-ing, skiing, and climbing. I also love making music, playing saxophone, piano, and guitar. Lastly, I'm a huge sports fan: go Celtics, Yankees, Patriots, and Man City!