Dr. Fang Yao is Chair Professor in Statistics at Peking University (PKU), serving as the Department Head of Probability & Statistics and the Director of the Center for Statistical Science at PKU. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS), the American Statistical Association (ASA), and an elected member of International Statistical Institute (ISI). Dr. Yao received his B.S. degree in 2000 from University of Science & Technology in China, and his Ph.D. degree in Statistics in 2003 at University of California, Davis under the supervision of Prof. Hans G. Müller and Jane-Ling Wang. He was a tenured Full Professor in Statistical Science at University of Toronto, and has been selected into the National Talents Program of China.

Dr. Yao’s research focuses on complex-structured data analysis, including functional, high-dimensional, manifold and non-Euclidean data objects; incorporating machine/deep learning and partial/ordinary differential equations to establish scalable statistical modeling and inference; conducting applications involving functional, high-dimensional and differential dynamics in biomedical studies, human genetics, neuroimaging, finance and economics, engineering etc. He has received the CRM-SSC Prize that recognizes a statistical scientist’s professional accomplishments in research primarily conducted in Canada during the fifteen years after receiving a doctorate. He has served as the Editor for Canadian Journal of Statistics (2019-2021), and is/was on editorial boards for a numebr of statistical journals, including the Annals of Statistics and Journal of the American Statistical Association.

Xplorer Prize 2024 (Mathematics and Physics)

The PhD student Ziyuan Chen is awarded the Doctoral Student Grant from NSFC--Congratulations!

The former PhD student Ying Yang has recently joined the Center for Applied Mathematics at Fudan University as a Young Research Fellow and also received the Xiaohui Young Scholarship--Congratulations!

The PhD student Guoyu Zhang, collaborated with Prof. Xuqin Wang, has the article accepted by JRSSB--Congratulations!
Tan, J., Zhang, G., Wang, X., Huang, H., & Yao, F. (2024). Green's matching: an efficient approach to parameter estimation in complex dynamic systems. 

The PhD student Ziyuan Chen, collaborated with the former PhD student Ying Yang who is a Post-doc fellow at Chinese Academy of Science, has the article accepted by JASA--Congratulations!
Chen, Z., Yang, Y., and Yao, F. (2023). Dynamic matrix recovery. 

The former PhD student, Ying Yang who is a Post-doc fellow at Chinese Academy of Science, has the article accepted by JRSSB--Congratulations!
Luo, S., Yang, Y., Shi, C., Yao, F., Ye, J., and Zhu, H.(2023) Policy Evaluation for Temporal and/or Spatial Dependent Experiments. 

A recent paper on functional prediction for network-level traffic flow has been published online.
Ma, T., Yao, F. and Zhou, Z. (2023) Network-level traffic flow prediction: functional time series vs. functional neural network approach.  

The former PhD student, Ying Yang who is a Post-doc fellow at Chinese Academy of Science, has the article accepted by JASA--Congratulations!
Yang, Y., Yao, F., and Zhao, P. (2023). Online smooth backfitting for generalized additive models. 

The former student, Huiming Zhang, has the article accepted by Journal of Machine Learning Research--Congratulations!
Xu, L., Yao, F., Yao, Q., and Zhang, H. (2023). Non-asymptotic guarantees for robust statistical learning under infinite variance assumption. 

The former PhD student, Kaijie Xue who is an Assisitant Professor in School of Statistics and Data Science at Nankai University, has the article accepted by JASA--Congratulations!
Xue, K., Yang, J., and Yao, F. (2022). Optimal linear discrinimant analysis for high-dimensional functional data. 

The former PhD student, Xiaoyu Hu who is a Post-doc fellow at NUS, has the article accepted by JASA--Congratulations!
Hu, X., and Yao, F. (2022). Dynamic principal component analysis in high dimensions. 

The PhD student, Hang Zhou, has the article accepted by Biometrika--Congratulations!
Zhou, H, Yao, F., and Zhang, H. (2022). Functional linear regression for discretely observed data: from ideal to reality. 

Congratulations to Ying Yang, Hang Zhou and Lingxuan Shao for successful defence of their PhD dissertations!

The postdoc fellow, Yang Zhou, has the article accepted by Journal of Machine Learning Research--Congratulations!
Zhou, Y., Koustaal, M., Yu, D., Kong, D., Yao, F. (2022). Nonparametric principal subspace regression. 

The PhD student, Lingxuan Shao, has the article accepted by The Annals of Statistics--Congratulations!
Shao, L., Lin Z., and Yao, F. (2022). Intrinsic Riemannian functional data analysis for sparse longitudinal observations.

The PhD student, Ying Yang, has published online the article--Congratulations!
Ying, Y., and Yao, F. (2022). Online estimation for functional data. 

The former PhD student, Decai Liang who is an Assistant Professor in School of Statistics and Data Science at Nankai University, has published online the article--Congratulations!
Liang, D., Huang, H., Guan, Y., and Yao, F. (2022). Test of weak separability for spatially stationary functional field. 

A recent paper on the number of change-points selection, collaborated with Professor Changliang Zou (Nankai U), has been published online.
Chen, H., Ren, H., Yao, F., and Zou, C. (2021). Data-driven selection of the number of change-points via error rate control.

The former PhD student, Zhenhua Lin who is an Assistant Professor in Department of Statistics and Data Science at National Singapore University, has published the article--Congratulations!
Lin, Z., and Yao, F. (2021). Functional regression on manifold with contamination.

Editor for Canadian Journal of Statistics, 2019-2021.

Associate Editor for Journal of the American Statistical Association, 2014-present.

Associate Editor for Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, 2012-present.

Associate Editor for Statistica Sinica, 2011-2014, 2017-present.

Completed Associate Editor terms: Annals of Statistics (2008--2009, 2013--2015), Bernoulli Journal (2013--2015), Electronic Journal of Statistics (2010--2012), Journal of Multivariate Analysis (2016-2018), Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference (2012--2014).