Abel is a Professor of Statistics at the University of Washington, and an affiliate member of the eScience Institute at the Center for Statistics in the Social Sciences. Currently, he also serves as the Chair of the Department of Statistics. 

Abel’s research interests include Bayesian statistics and machine learning, especially nonparametric methods, spatio-temporal models, network analysis and extreme value theory. He has employed this research to address a range of problems including studies of justices’ decisions in the US Supreme Court, spatial voting patterns, financial trading, cognitive social structures and record linkage, among many others. Abel is an Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute and a Fellow of the American Statistical Association. He also serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Statistical Association, the Annals of Applied Statistics, Bayesian Analysis, and the International Statistical Review.