Buxin Su
I am a Ph.D. student in Applied Mathematics and Computational Science at the University of Pennsylvania, where I have worked with Weijie Su and Bingxin Zhao. Before that, I received an M.S. in Pure Mathematics from Penn and a B.S. in both Pure Mathematics and Applied Mathematics from the University of Toronto, graduating with High Distinction.
My research lies at the intersection of statistics, machine learning, and the social sciences. I develop statistical theory and methods to address three connected challenges: improving how the AI community evaluates research, increasing the utility of social data under privacy constraints, and making statistical learning more reliable for biomedical applications. My work combines theoretical analysis, empirical experiments, and practical implementation. Contributions include methods incorporated into the ICML 2026 review process, methods that reduce noise variance in the 2020 U.S. Census by about 20% while maintaining the same level of privacy protection, and studies of the statistical foundations of biomedical prediction.
Recent & Featured Papers
A selection of recent work — see Publications for the full list.
-
The ICML 2023 Ranking Experiment: Examining Author Self-Assessment in ML/AI Peer ReviewJournal of the American Statistical Association, 2025
Introducing self-ranking to ICML 2026 -
The 2020 United States Decennial Census Is More Private Than You (Might) ThinkProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2025
Featured by New Scientist -
Self-rankings as a predictor of scientific impact beyond peer reviewNature Computational Science, 2026
Featured by Nature Index
News & Awards
- Sep 2026 Our work on self-rankings and scientific impact is featured by Penn Today and The Daily Pennsylvanian.
- Aug 2026 “Self-rankings as a predictor of scientific impact beyond peer review” is published in Nature Computational Science, with an accompanying News & Views article.
- May 2026 Received the NESS Student Research Award at the New England Statistics Symposium.
- Jan 2026 Named a finalist for the Two Sigma PhD Fellowship and gave an invited talk at the finalist reception.
- Jan 2026 ICML 2026 introduced a self-ranking policy for reviews, building on our research. I am also serving as an Associate Chair for ICML 2026.
- Oct 2025 Received the Lawrence D. Brown Best Paper Award from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
- Sep 2025 “The 2020 United States Decennial Census Is More Private Than You (Might) Think” is accepted by PNAS and featured by New Scientist.
- Aug 2025 “The ICML 2023 Ranking Experiment” is published in JASA and selected as a Discussion Paper.
- Jul 2025 Received the ICSA NSF Travel Award at the ICSA 2025 Applied Statistics Symposium.
- Jan 2024 Won the Student Best Paper Award, Statistical Learning and Data Science Section, American Statistical Association.