The 2021 International Workshop on Statistical Theory and Related Fields (STARF 2021) was held during December 11th and 12th, which aims to provide participants with a platform for academic exchange on modern statistical theory, methods and applications. STARF 2021 is hosted by East China Normal University, co-organized by the editorial board of Statistical Theory and Related Fields and the Big Data Branch of the China Field Statistics Research Association, the School of Statistics of East China Normal University and the Key Laboratory of Frontier Theory and Application of Statistics and Data Science of the Ministry of Education. The workshop was held online and offline and the opening ceremony was held in the Science Building of North Zhongshan Road Campus and was hosted by Professor Tang Yincai, the executive editor of Statistical Theory and Related Fields.
Professor Lei Qili, Vice President of East China Normal University, firstly expressed warm welcome and thanks to the experts and scholars at home and abroad on behalf of the university. Then, he introduced the basic situation of the university and announced that statistics had entered a brand new stage of development. Facing the opportunities and challenges in this new stage, East China Normal University and the China Field Statistics Research Association jointly founded the first English academic journal of statistics in mainland China, Statistical Theory and Related Fields, in 2017, to actively promote and facilitate statistical theory and its application in natural sciences, medicine, economics and social sciences and other related fields. It is an international academic platform for publishing and disseminating first-class research results and promoting Chinese statistics to the world. He thanked all the experts and scholars for their support to East China Normal University, and finally wished the workshop a great success.
Professor Zhang Riquan, Dean of the School of Statistics, introduced the development of statistics discipline in East China Normal University from the aspects of history, academic team, training system, research direction, key laboratories, social services, etc. In 2017, statistics discipline ranked the third (A) in China in the discipline evaluation of the Ministry of Education, and was selected as one of the "double first-class" disciplines by the Ministry of Education. He hopes that experts and scholars will continue to support the discipline of statistics and Statistical Theory and Related Fields of ECNU.
The workshop was attended by more than 400 well-known statisticians, data scientists and research scholars from home and abroad. The seminar invited Professor Chen Songqi, academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Peking University; Professor Lin Xihong and Professor Liu Jun, recipients of COPSS Award, Harvard University; Professor Lin Huazhen, Southwest University of Finance and Economics; Professor Liu Weidong, Shanghai Jiaotong University; Professor Wang Zhaojun, Nankai University; Professor Wang Xueqin, University of Science and Technology of China, and 19 experts in the field of statistical analysis shared their latest research results in 4 sessions. In addition, there were 5 parallel sessions in which 31 young scholars shared their research progress. In order to encourage young scholars to actively participate in the seminar, an excellent workshop paper award was added. The award committee selected 7 outstanding workshop papers from the papers presented in the sessions based on the quality of presentation and innovation of the papers.
With the advantages of statistics discipline of East China Normal University in China, the influence of China Field Statistics Research Association in mainland China, the good reputation of special guests in the international statistics field and the forward-looking reports, this workshop attracted scholars engaged in statistical theory and application research in universities and industries to attend, effectively promoting the development of domestic big data statistics in biomedicine, industrial engineering, finance, Internet and other fields, and demonstrating the interdisciplinary application results of statistics and other disciplines.
Copy editor: Henry Allen
Editor: Li Yinan
