Anjana Yatawara
Assistant Professor of Mathematics & Statistics
I am a statistician and applied mathematician studying how financial markets encode and forget information. My research develops new econometric models for volatility persistence, applies machine learning to public health forecasting, and investigates income-based environmental exposure disparities. I also build AI-powered tools that help students learn statistics — work supported by the California Learning Lab. The industry and job market have changed dramatically in recent years, and I see it as my responsibility to prepare students for this new reality — equipping them not just with statistical knowledge, but with the computational, AI-literate, and data-driven skills that the modern workforce demands. At CSUB, I teach courses spanning elementary statistics to mathematical statistics and applied data science, and I mentor undergraduate researchers across multiple funded programs.
Recent & selected work
Income-Based Exposure Disparities Across California Counties, 2000–2023: A Generalizable Statistical Framework
Published in Environmental Research: Health, 2025
Evaluating Fine-Scale Air-Quality Heterogeneity Using a Low-Cost Multipollutant Sensor Network in Twin Cities, Minnesota
Published in ACS ES&T Air, 2025
The Shape of Volatility Memory: Sub-Exponential ARCH(∞) Kernels Across 100+ Financial Assets
Working paper — target: Journal of Business & Economic Statistics
MF2V-GARCH: Augmenting Multi-Factor Volatility with Smoothed Trading Volume
Working paper — target: Journal of Forecasting