Deborah Kunkel
Associate Professor School of Math and Statistical Sciences
Email: dekunke@clemson.edu
Dr. Deborah Kunkel completed her bachelor’s in business from the University of Dallas (2011), followed by an M.S. (2014) and Ph.D. (2018) in statistics from The Ohio State University, advised by Mario Peruggia. She joined Clemson University in 2018 and is now an associate professor in the School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences. She is a part of the applied statistics and data science subfaculty.
Research
Dr. Kunkel is an applied statistician with expertise in Bayesian mixture models and linear regression models. She has developed methods for multivariate linear regression models in polygenic prediction. In addition to this work, she addresses problems of prediction and modeling in various disciplines such as sociology, public health, psychology and engineering.
Select Publications
Kunkel, D., Sorensen, P., Shankar, V. and Morgante, F. “Improving polygenic prediction from summary data by learning patterns of sharing across multiple phenotypes” (2025). PLOS Genetics, 26, e1011519 (2025). doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1011519.
Kunkel, D. and Peruggia, M., “Statistical inference with anchored Bayesian mixture of regressions models: A case study analysis of allometric data.” Statistica Sinica 35, 779-797 (2025).
Kunkel, D., Stuenkel, M., Sivaraj, L., Colenda, C., Pekarek, L. and Rennert, L. “Predictive value of clinical symptoms for COVID-19 diagnosis in young adults”. Journal of American College Health, 72(4), 1006-1009 (2024). doi: 10.1080/07448481.2022.2068963.
Sianko, N. and Kunkel, D. “Longitudinal Patterns in Adolescent Intentions to Seek Help for Dating Violence: A Latent Transition Analysis,” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 51, 673-693 (2022). doi: 10.1007/s10964-022-01569-6.