Research interests

My research interests lie in mathematical statistics, with a particular focus on developing theory and methods for extremum estimators in high-dimensional proportional asymptotics. Within this framework, I study estimator and prediction performance, dimensionality corrections, optimal shrinkage, and statistical inference, and I am interested in extending these ideas to modern machine learning methods.

I also work on penalised likelihood theory in classical fixed-$p$ asymptotic settings, particularly in problems where standard estimators can fail to exist with positive probability.

Alongside this methodological work, I have been involved in interdisciplinary research in medical statistics. I also place strong emphasis on translating theoretical work into practical statistical software, primarily in R and Julia.

Publications & Preprints

Statistics

• Sterzinger, P. & Kosmidis, I. (in press). Diaconis–Ylvisaker prior penalized likelihood for $p/n \to \kappa \in (0,1)$ logistic regression. Biometrika.

  DOI arXiv Supplementary material

• Sterzinger, P., Kosmidis, I. & Moustaki, I. (in press). Maximum softly-penalized likelihood for factor analysis. Psychometrika.

  DOI arXiv Supplementary material

• Sterzinger, P. & Kosmidis, I. (2023). Maximum softly-penalized likelihood for mixed effects logistic regression. Statistics and Computing, 33, Article 53.

  DOI arXiv Supplementary material

Software

• Kosmidis, I. & contributors (incl. Sterzinger, P.). (2017). brglm2: Bias reduction in generalized linear models [R package].

  CRAN Code

Interdisciplinary Collaborations

• Pölzl, L., Thielmann, M., Sterzinger, P., et al. (2025). Sex-specific cardiac troponin and creatine kinase-MB thresholds to identify females at risk after CABG. Annals of Thoracic Surgery, 119.

• Pölzl, L., Lohmann, R., Theurl, F., Puelacher, C., Sterzinger, P., et al. (2025). Prognostic implications of preoperative N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide dynamics in patients undergoing cardiac surgery. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 4.

• Pölzl, L., Sterzinger, P., et al. (2024). Postoperative cardiac biomarker release is not associated with myocardial mass in computed tomography scans. Interdisciplinary Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery, 38.

• Pölzl, L., Lohmann, R., Sterzinger, P., et al. (2024). Complexity of coronary artery disease and the release of cardiac biomarkers after CABG. Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine, 11.

• Pölzl, L., Engler, C., Sterzinger, P., et al. (2023). Association of high-sensitivity cardiac troponin T with 30-day and 5-year mortality after cardiac surgery. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 82.

PhD thesis

• Sterzinger, P. (2024). Improving estimation and prediction from statistical models.