Gratitude:

A short and incomplete list.

• Mihai Anitescu was the best boss I'll ever have. I took two of his classes as an undergraduate that I wasn't entirely ready for and he was patient and encouraging, and he took a huge chance on me when he hired me at ANL. He has been a huge influence on my academic interests and on how I approach problems in general. If he hadn't given me such a huge opportunity and been so supportive throughout, I probably would not have become a scientist at all. I really can't say enough about what he's done for me and how grateful I am.
• Rong Chen has been incredibly generous with his time and thoughts. I have done a lot of exploring in the Rutgers PhD program and Professor Chen has consistently been patient and supportive beyond what anybody could reasonably expect.
• Charlotte Haley taught me basically everything I know about spectral domain representations of stochastic processes, and was incredibly supportive and generous with her time when I started at ANL.
• Wenjia Jing 's introductory real analysis class was my first serious exposure to the subject, and the two quarters that I had with him really cemented my love for analysis.
• Paytsar Muradyan Was _incredibly_ helpful as I tried to work with the Doppler LIDAR data for the "Flexible nonstationary..." paper. Taking that data and the relevant physical properties of the process seriously would have been effectively impossible without her help. It's hard to overstate how helpful and informative my conversations with her were.
• Michael Stein 's introductory course (STAT 244) made me change my undergraduate plans and try to take statistics seriously. Despite me being pretty annoying, he's also been consistently patient, helpful, and supportive for over five years now. He has been incredibly influential on my interests and approach.
• Amie Wilkinson taught my favorite course that I took as an undergraduate---complex analysis---and has been incredibly generous with her time as I've asked her to write way too many recommendation letters for me.
• Lydia Zoells Is my partner and my best friend. She painted the portrait displayed above and copyedits all of my boring papers. I couldn't imagine life without her.
• The entire spatial statistics community has been incredibly warm and welcoming.