Kevin Moon

College of Science: Mathematics & Statistics

An assistant professor in USU’s Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Kevin Moon grew up on a cattle ranch near Duchesne, Utah. The data scientist holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Brigham Young University, as well as a M.S. degree in mathematics and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan. Moon was a postdoctoral scholar in the Genetics Department and the Applied Mathematics Program at Yale University.

Moon’s research interests, in which he involves his graduate students, include the development of theory and applications in machine learning, information theory, deep learning, as well as manifold learning with applications in biology, ecology, navigation and finance. Areas in which Moon has tackled specific problems include manifold learning for data visualization, manifold learning with random forests and accurate nonparametric estimation of information theoretic measures. His work has been published in prestigious journals, including Nature, Nature Biotechnology and Cell. At USU, Moon has designed three graduate courses focused on deep learning and neural networks, machine learning and mathematics for data science. He has advised four master’s students and currently advises six doctoral students. Moon has served on five graduate committees and currently serves on 11 others.