Rate My Professor Don Hong

Dr. Don Hong is a Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU), where he serves as Coordinator of the Actuarial Science Program and the Actuarial Science in MSPS Program within the Department of Mathematical Sciences. A recipient of the 2009 MTSU Foundation Distinguished Faculty Research Award, he has made substantial contributions to approximation theory, splines, wavelets, and their applications in computational data analysis, proteomics, medical imaging, bioinformatics, and actuarial science. Hong is a faculty member in MTSU's Ph.D. Program in Computational Science and leads a research group focused on advanced mathematical tools for quantitative analysis.

His scholarly output includes two books: Real Analysis with an Introduction to Wavelets (Elsevier/Academic Press, 2004, co-authored with Jianzhong Wang and Robert Gardner) and Quantitative Medical Data Analysis Using Mathematical Tools and Statistical Techniques (World Scientific, 2007, co-authored with Yu Shyr). Notable publications encompass 'Spaces of bivariate spline functions over triangulation' (Approximation Theory and its Applications, 1991), 'Stability of optimal-order approximation by bivariate splines over arbitrary triangulations' (Transactions of the American Mathematical Society, 1995), 'BERT-based NLP techniques for classification and severity modeling in basic warranty data study' (Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, 2022), and 'REM Sleep Stage Identification with Raw Single-Channel EEG' (Bioengineering, 2023). Hong has edited proceedings such as Wavelets and Approximation Theory (Journal of Computational Analysis and Applications, 2003) and secured grants including NSF awards (e.g., DMS-0649753 for Quantitative Proteomics Workshop, 2007-2008; $99,999 for wavelets in proteomics, 2004-2005), NSA grants ($15,250, 2005), Casualty Actuarial Society grants ($15,000, 2021-2022), and Tennessee HHS Health Rate Review projects ($740,000 total, 2011-2013). He has delivered numerous invited presentations worldwide, including colloquium talks on multivariate splines, hyperspectral data processing, and big data applications at universities in China, Canada, and the US, such as Fudan University (2014), North China University of Technology (multiple years), and Banff International Research Station (2007). His work has influenced computational biology, data mining, and risk management through multiscale analysis techniques and biomarker discovery methods.