Rianne de Heide
photo: Annabel Jeuring
Department of Applied Mathematics
Zilverling (building nr. 11), room 2098
Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS)
University of Twente
Hallenweg 19, 7522 NH Enschede
E-mail: r.deheide [at] utwente [dot] nl
About me
I am an assistant professor in the Statistics group (STAT) in the Department of Applied Mathematics, at the University of Twente. I work on problems and solutions in machine learning and statistics. My research focuses on hypothesis testing, Bayesian learning and best-arm identification problems. Currently I work on my VENI project 'E-values for Multiple Testing’. Central in my work is both bringing a solid mathematical foundation to the topics I work on in different fields, as well as making the theory accessible for less mathematical audiences. I’m also interested in the mathematical and philosophical foundations of Bayesianism, machine learning, statistics and probability theory.
I wrote a column for NAW about my view on statistics as a field and where it should go: a paradigm shift (PDF).
Before coming to the University of Twente, I was an assistant professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Until my family moves north/east, I'm very grateful for the flexibility of the University of Twente to work partly remotely, and for LUXs Data Science in Leiden, and CWI and VU Mathematics in Amsterdam to welcome me as a guest researcher and to let me use their facilities.
I’m committed to DEI and want to contribute to academia being a workplace where everyone feels valued and can be themselves. Be welcome to have a chat with me about it. I started an intiative for propagating kindness in academia (news article UToday, website).
Outside of work, some easy topics for conversation are: running, cycling, swimming (guess where this may be going…), hiking, training dogs, raising kids, languages, classical music, and much more!
M2 Grant - Two vacancies for PhD students
Jelle Goeman and I are very happy that our project “Flexible and user-adaptive statistical inference” was awarded an M2 grant of 742.708 euro's. The project is a collaboration between Jelle Goeman (LUMC) and myself (University of Twente). The funds allow us to employ 2 PhD students, who will be co-supervised by both of us, and a scientific programmer. (news article)
We have now opened the two vacancies for PhD students (link). We will review applications on a rolling horizon, so it is wise to apply at your earliest convenience.
News
June: I give a talk at the Department of Statistics of Athens University of Economics and Business
June: I give a tutorial on e-values at O'Bayes in Athens.
March 10: I talk in the Delft Seminar in Probability and Statistics.
March 1: we launched the website for the Kindness and Excellence initiative.
Jelle Goeman and I were awarded an NWO M2 grant of f 742.708 euro's. The funds allow us to employ 2 PhD students, who will be co-supervised by both of us, and a scientific programmer. (news article UT)
UToday wrote an article about our Kindness and Excellence in Academia initiative (news article UToday)
I will be awarded the 2025 Bernoulli Society New Researcher Award (news article UT, niewsbericht UT Nederlands)
Older News
There were several interviews with me in (national) newspapers and magazines: NAW (PDF), NRC (PDF, Link), The New Scientist (Picture), and Ad Valvas (Link).
I was awarded the 2023 Cor Baayen Early Career Researcher Award (news article)
I was awarded a Veni grant (https://vu.nl/en/news/2023/veni-grant-for-rianne-de-heide-s-research-into-new-mathematical-theory news article)
Research
My research interests include
Bandits, Reinforcement Learning
Hypothesis testing with e-values, any-time valid testing, multiple testing
Group invariance in statistics
Bayesian methods
Learning theory
Imprecise probabilities in statistics
Foundations of ML, stats and probability theory