I am an Associate Professor of Statistics and Data Science in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Thompson Rivers University (TRU). Prior to joining TRU, I served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer and Mathematical Sciences at the University of Toronto Scarborough. I hold a PhD in Statistics, with a specialization in Statistical Machine Learning, from the Department of Statistics at The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. In addition, I hold two MSc degrees: one in Statistics from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Windsor, and another in Biostatistics from the Department of Statistics at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh.

My research interests include statistical machine learning, Bayesian statistical inference, and statistical ecology. My research primarily focuses on developing ensemble methods to improve predictive performance by effectively leveraging informative variables in high-dimensional data and identifying influential models and variables to address important scientific questions. I have applied these methods to a range of interdisciplinary problems, including (i) drug discovery, where they have been used to identify drug-like bioactive molecules that support drug development, and (ii) protein homology, where they have been employed to detect homologous proteins and infer protein evolutionary relationships. More recently, my research has increasingly focused on the development of Bayesian and computational models for applications in ecology, healthcare, housing markets, and genetics.

Highlighted Publications

    1. Reudink, M. W., Toor, A., Tomal, J. H., Gill, J., Ehlert, J., Otter, K. A., Oud, M., Nadeem, A. H., and Donkor, K. (2025). Feather trace element profiles in urban mountain chickadees differ from those in adjacent rural populations. Urban Ecosystems (Springer), 28(2), 25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-025-01683-w
    2. Tomal, J. H., Welch, W. J., and Zamar, R. H. (2023). Robust ranking by ensembling diverse models and evaluation metrics. Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation (Taylor & Francis), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/00949655.2022.2093873
    3. Tomal, J. H., Khan, J. R., and Wahed, A. (2022). Weighted Bayesian Poisson regression for the number of children ever born per woman in Bangladesh. Journal of Statistical Theory and Applications (Springer), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44199-022-00044-2
    4. Atkins, M., Howarth, C., Russello, M., Tomal, J. H., and Larsen, K. (2022). Evidence of intrapopulation differences in rattlesnake defensive behavior across adjacent habitats. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology (Springer), 76(3), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-021-03100-6
    5. Tomal, J. H., and Rahman, H. (2021). A Bayesian piecewise linear model for detecting breakpoints in housing prices. METRON (Springer), 79(3), 361–381. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40300-021-00223-8
    6. Tomal, J. H., Rahmati, S., Boroushaki, S., Jin, L., and Ahmed, E. (2021). The impact of COVID-19 on students’ marks: A Bayesian hierarchical modeling approach. METRON (Springer), 79, 57–91. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40300-021-00200-1
    7. Tomal, J. H., and Ciborowski, J. J. H. (2020). Ecological models for estimating breakpoints and prediction intervals. Ecology and Evolution (Wiley), 10, 13500–13517. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.6955
    8. Evans, M., and Tomal, J. H. (2018). Measuring statistical evidence and multiple testing. FACETS, 3, 563–583. https://doi.org/10.1139/facets-2017-0121
    9. Tomal, J. H., Welch, W. J., and Zamar, R. H. (2016). Exploiting multiple descriptor sets in QSAR studies. Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling, 56(3), 501–509. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jcim.5b00663
    10. Tomal, J. H., Welch, W. J., and Zamar, R. H. (2015). Ensembling classification models based on phalanxes of variables with applications in drug discovery. The Annals of Applied Statistics, 9(1), 69–93. https://doi.org/10.1214/14-AOAS778

Education

Employment History

  • Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Thompson Rivers University (July 2023 – Present)
  • Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Thompson Rivers University (December 2018 – June 2023)
  • Assistant Professor, Department of Computer and Mathematical Sciences, University of Toronto Scarborough (2014 – 2018)
  • Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Statistics, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver (January 2014 – July 2014)
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