Sharon McNicholas
Sharon McNicholas is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, McMaster University. She holds two Ph.D. degrees, one in Statistics and the other in Physics. Her Ph.D. in Statistics was supported by an Alexander Graham Bell Scholarship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada.
Her research focus is on data science and the computational aspects of statistics, with a particular focus on the analysis of modern data sets, i.e., so-called big data. The focus of some recent resarch has been on using evolutionary computation techniques for parameter estimation within various statistical models. She has also developed an approach that is effective for finding subgroups in high-dimensional data. This approach is based on mixtures of variance gamma distributions, which permit asymmetric and heavier-tailed subgroups.
About
Appointments
Research interests
Big data, data science, evolutionary computation, statistical learning.
Research funding
Education
▪ Ph.D. in Statistics, University of Guelph, 2016.
Thesis title: Topics in Evolutionary Computation and Model-Based Clustering.
▪ Ph.D. in Physics, Trinity College Dublin, 2008.
Thesis title: Optical Characterization of Silicon Nanowire Structures.
▪ B.Sc. in Physics and Physics Technology, Dublin Institute of Technology, 2003.
First class honours.
Publications
Peer-Reviewed Contributions
McNicholas, S.M. , McNicholas, P.D. and Browne, R.P. (2017), 'A mixture of variance-gamma factor analyzers' in S.E. Ahmed (ed.) Big and Complex Data Analysis. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 369-385.
Ashlock, D. and McNicholas, S. (2013), 'Fitness landscapes of evolved cellular automata'. IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation 17(2), 198-212.
Ashlock, D. and McNicholas, S. (2012), 'Single parent generalization of cellular automata rules' in Proceedings of the 2012 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, 1-8.
NiMhuircheartaigh, E., Giordani, S., MacKernan, D., King, S.M. , Rickard, D., Val Verde, L.M., Senge, M.O. and Blau W.J. (2011), 'Molecular engineering of nonplanar porphyrin and carbon nanotube assemblies: A linear and nonlinear spectroscopic and modeling study'. Journal of Nanotechnology 8, Article ID 745202, 12 pages.
King, S.M. , Chaure, S., Krisnamurthy, S., Colli, A., Ferrari, A. and Blau W.J. (2008), 'Optical characterisation of oxide encapsulated silicon nanowires of various morphologies'. Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology 8(8), 4202-4206.
King, S.M. , Chaure, S., Doyle, J., Colli, A., Ferrari, A. and Blau W.J. (2007), 'Scattering induced optical limiting in Si/SiO2 nanostructure dispersions'. Optics Communications 276, 305-309.
Submitted Contributions
McNicholas, S.M. , McNicholas, P.D. and Ashlock, D.A., 'An evolutionary algorithm with crossover and mutation for model-based clustering’.
Kampo, R.S., McNicholas, S.M., McNicholas, P.D., ‘Clustering incomplete data using evolutionary algorithms’.
Teaching
Ph.D. Courses
Winter 2019
Winter 2018, Fall 2018, Winter 2019, Fall 2019, Winter 2020
Undergraduate/Master’s Courses
Winter 2020
Winter 2017, Fall 2017, Winter 2019
Winter 2017, Fall 2017
Course Development
▪ STATS 3DS03: Introduction to Data Science Theory