Email Professor Sheng to schedule an appointment: y.sheng@uchicago.edu

Yanyan Sheng is a Senior Instructional Professor of Quantitative Methods, as well as Associate Director of the Committee on Quantitative Methods in Social, Behavioral and Health Sciences, and Co-Director of the Quantitative Social Analysis minor program. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2005. 

Professor Sheng’s research focuses on psychometrics, with particular emphasis on Bayesian item response theory (IRT) modeling – ranging from the development of fully Bayesian unidimensional and multidimensional IRT models to empirical evaluations of test theory and the application of high-performance computing in Bayesian IRT estimation. She has also contributed to interdisciplinary projects in serious games analytics, including co-editing the volume Serious Games Analytics (2015), and has served as co-investigator on multiple federally and state-funded initiatives supporting equitable STEM education, large-scale assessments, and computational advancements in psychometrics. Alongside her research, she serves as Associate Editor for Frontiers in Quantitative Psychology and Measurement.