Joni Virta
Academy Research Fellow/Assistant Professor
jomivi@utu.fi +358 29 450 4321 +358 50 350 9623 Office: 262 ORCID identifier: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2150-2769 |
Dimension reduction; Multivariate statistics; Asymptotic statistics
Robust non-linear multivariate methods
I obtained my PhD in Statistics from University of Turku in 2018 under the supervision of Hannu Oja, Klaus Nordhausen and Bing Li. In 2018-2019 I worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Mathematics and Systems Analysis in Aalto University School of Science and received also the title of docent from there. Between 2019-2022 I worked as an Academy of Finland Postdoctoral Researcher first in Aalto and later in Turku.
Since September 2022 I have been working at Department of Mathematics in the dual role of Academy Research Fellow and Assistant Professor (with specialization in the theoretical foundations of statistics).
My current main research area is robust non-linear methodology, which I study under my Academy Research Fellow project. In addition, my research emphasizes the modification of classical multivariate methodology (such as PCA) to work under non-standard forms of data (images, function, spatial data) and the asymptotic theory related to these questions.
Between 2022-2027 my amount of teaching will be small because of my role as an Academy Research Fellow. However, I still teach, e.g, Advanced Multivariate Methods during this period.
- A method for sparse and robust independent component analysis (2026)
- Journal of Multivariate Analysis
(A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal) - Evaluation of temporal preservation in synthetic longitudinal patient data (2026)
- Journal of Biomedical Informatics
(A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal) - Metric Oja depth, new statistical tool for estimating the most central objects (2026)
- Computational Statistics and Data Analysis
(A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal) - Spatial depth for data in metric spaces (2026)
- Scandinavian Journal of Statistics
(A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal) - Unsupervised linear discrimination using skewness (2026)
- Journal of Multivariate Analysis
(A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal) - Dimension estimation in a spiked covariance model using high-dimensional data augmentation (2025)
- Biometrika
(A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal) - ICS for multivariate functional anomaly detection with applications to predictive maintenance and quality control (2025)
- Econometrics and Statistics
(A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal) - Kurtosis-based projection pursuit for matrix-valued data (2025)
- Annals of Statistics
(A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal) - Measure of shape for object data (2025)
- Journal of Nonparametric Statistics
(A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal) - Methods for Generating and Evaluating Synthetic Longitudinal Patient Data: A Systematic Review (2025)
- Journal of Healthcare Informatics Research
(A2 Refereed review article in a scientific journal )



