Ji Meng’s research interest is in spatial statistics. This involves working with data that contains information about the locations from which the data are collected. Statistical analyses make use of the correlation inherent in the spatial data to improve statistical inference.
Ji Meng’s particular area of expertise is in the analysis of spatial point patterns. His work has included analyzing the degree of clustering of astronomical gas clouds, examining the relation between locations of fast food restaurants and schools in New York City, using cellular data for urban planning, residual analysis of models fit to fMRI data to identify mismodeling, and anomaly detection of spatial point patterns in order to identify unusual clusters of data points.
Ji Meng is also working on quantifying and displaying differences between two sets of mapped data, understanding the effect of data quality issues on statistical inference.