Nevena Gligić

Nevena Gligić

PhD candidate in Statistics at The University of Texas at Austin

Nevena Gligić

I am a final-year PhD candidate in Statistics at the Department of Statistics and Data Science, The University of Texas at Austin, advised by Dr. Arya Farahi in the D3 Research Lab and funded by the NSF–Simons AI Institute for Cosmic Origins (CosmicAI).

My research focuses on developing machine learning and statistical methods to solve real-world problems in domains such as astronomy, electricity consumption, finance, and others. So far, I have designed deep generative models for reliable AI under noise, contamination, and distributional shift. My work has been applied to gravitational-wave detection, galaxy population inference, and anomaly detection for energy consumption monitoring with the City of Austin across city-operated buildings.

Prior to joining UT Austin, I completed an MSc in Computational Finance at University College London, with a Master’s thesis on operational risk modelling carried out in collaboration with UCL and Santander Bank UK, supervised by Dr. Giacomo Livan (UCL) and Dr. Peter Mitic (Santander Bank UK, UCL). I also hold a BSc (Hons.) in Mathematics from the University of Manchester.

Awards and achievements

Best Paper Award — STAI-X, 2026 For Density-Informed Pseudo-Counts for Calibrated Evidential Deep Learning.

Keller Award — UT Austin, 2026 Awarded for leadership across academic, research, and community-building activities, providing service to the department and university, and for supporting other students in the PhD program.

College of Natural Sciences PhD Fellowship — UT Austin, 2022–2027

School of Mathematics Entrance Scholarship — The University of Manchester, 2017

Co-founder, Directed Reading Program in Statistics and Data Sciences — UT Austin, 2026 The department’s first DRP, pairing undergraduates with PhD mentors for semester-long independent research projects.

Availability

I am on the industry job market for relevant roles and available upon completing my PhD. My expected graduation date is May 2027. I am also happy to talk about earlier timelines.

I am considering roles in:

  • Austin, or US-remote
  • the EU – in-person or hybrid preferred, willing to relocate; open to remote for the right role. I need no sponsorship or visa to work in the US or in the EU.

If you have a relevant opening, please reach out at nevena.gligich@gmail.com.