Runze Li Named Verne M. Willaman Professor of Statistics
Runze Li, Distinguished Professor of Statistics at Penn State University, has been selected as the Verne M. Willaman Professor of Statistics. The appointment, effective on December 1, 2014, is awarded by the Office of the President of the University, based on the recommendation of the Dean of the Eberly College of Science, in recognition of Li's national and international reputation for excellence in research and teaching.
Li's research involves several fields of statistics, including high-dimensional data analysis, variable selection, and longitudinal data analysis. Li also studies various statistical applications such as design and modeling for computer experiments, behavioral science, genetic-data analysis, and brain-image analysis.
Li has received various awards and honors. He received a National Science Foundation Career Award in 2004. He was elected as a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 2009, and he was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2011. He received the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization Norbert Gerbier-MUMM International Award for 2012. He was named Distinguished Professor of Statistics at Penn State in 2013 and was named a Highly Cited Researcher in Mathematics by the Thomson Reuters news organization in 2014.
Li has co-authored a book, "Design and Modeling for Computer Experiments," and he has written numerous scientific papers published in a wide spectrum of statistical journals including The Annals of Statistics, Biometrics, Biometrika, the Journal of the American Statistical Association, the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (both Series B and Series C), Statistics in Medicine, Statistica Sinica, and Technometrics. He also has published interdisciplinary research papers in journals focusing on areas other than statistics such as Psychological Methods, Drug and Alcohol Dependence, Prevention Science, Human Genetics, Briefings in Bioinformatics, Neuroimage, the Journal of Chemometrics, Geophysical Research Letters, and Environmental Research Letters.
Li was the chair of the graduate program in statistics at Penn State from 2007 to 2012 and he has served on various committees in the Department of Statistics, the Eberly College of Science, and the University. Li's extensive service to the statistical community includes serving as co-editor-in-chief of The Annals of Statistics from 2013 to 2015 with the renowned statistician Peter Hall and previously serving as the journal's associate editor from 2007 to 2012. In addition, he served as associate editor for the Journal of the American Statistical Association from 2006 to 2012, and for Statistica Sinica from 2005 to 2012. He also has helped to organize statistical conferences in the United States and other countries. He chaired scientific-program committees of three international conferences held in Korea, Japan, and China and served as a session organizer and a scientific-program committee member for many other conferences.
In 2000, Li earned a doctoral degree in statistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has been a faculty member at Penn State since 2000. He was promoted to associate professor in 2005 and to professor in 2008.