Jianqing Fan, is a statistician, financial econometrician, and data scientist. He is Frederick L. Moore '18 Professor of Finance, Professor of Statistics, and Professor of Operations Research and Financial Engineering at the Princeton University, where he chaired the department from 2012 to 2015. He is the winner of The 2000 COPSS Presidents' Award, Morningside Gold Medal for Applied Mathematics (2007), Guggenheim Fellow (2009), Pao-Lu Hsu Prize (2013), Guy Medal in Silver (2014), Noether Distinguished Scholar (2018), Le Cam Award and Lectures (2021). He got elected to Academician from Academia Sinica (中央研究院院士) in 2012 and Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium (比利时皇家科学院院士） in 2023.
Research
Fan is interested in statistical theory and methods in data science, statistical machine learning, finance, economics, computational biology, biostatistics with particular skills on high-dimensional statistics, machine learning, spectral methods, neural networks, reinforcement learning, nonparametric modeling, longitudinal and functional data analysis, survival analysis, nonlinear time series, wavelets, among others.[1]
For a more comprehensive introduction, including research contributions, see the article “Data Science in Economics and Finance: Introduction” by Matias D. Cattaneo, Yingying Fan, Runze Li, Rui Song to be published in Journal of Econometrics (2024, 239, 1-6), a special issue in honor of Jianqing Fan's 60th birthday.
Career
Jianqing Fan is a joint editor of Journal of American Statistical Association (2023-2026) and an associate editor of Management Science (2018--), among others, was the co-editor(-in-chief) of the Annals of Statistics (2004-2006), Probability Theory and Related Fields (2003-2005), Econometrical Journal (2007-2012), Journal of Econometrics (2012-2018; managing editor 2014-18), Journal of Business and Economics Statistics (2018-2021), and on the editorial boards of a number of journals, including Journal of the American Statistical Association (1996-2017), Econometrica (2010-2013), Annals of Statistics (1998-2003), Statistica Sinica (1996-2002), and Journal of Financial Econometrics (2009-2012). He was the past president of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (2006-2009), and past president of the International Chinese Statistical Association (2008-2010).
After receiving his Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1989, he has been appointed as assistant, associate, and full professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1989-2003), and as professor at the University of California at Los Angeles (1997-2000), Professor of Statistics and Chairman at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (2000-2003), and professor at the Princeton University (2003-), where he directed the Committee of Statistical Studies (2005-2017) and chaired Department of Operations Research and Financial Engineering from 2012 to 2015. He was named Frederick L. Moore'18 Professor of Finance since 2006
Fan has coauthored four highly-regarded books on Local Polynomial Modeling and Its Applications (1996), Nonlinear time series: Parametric and Nonparametric Methods (2003), Elements of Financial Econometrics (2015), Statistical Foundations of Data Science (2020), and authored or coauthored over 300 articles on finance, economics, statistical machine learning, computational biology, spectral methods for data science, semiparametric and non-parametric modeling, nonlinear time series, survival analysis, longitudinal data analysis, and other aspects of theoretical and methodological statistics. He has been consistently ranked as a top 10 highly-cited mathematical scientist since the existence of such a ranking. His published work on statistics, financial econometrics, computational biology, and statistical machine learning has been recognized by the 2000 COPSS Presidents' Award, given annually to an outstanding statistician under age 40, invited speaker at The 2006 International Congress for Mathematicians, The Humboldt Research Award for lifetime achievement in 2006, The Morningside Gold Medal of Applied Mathematics in 2007, honoring triennially an outstanding applied mathematician of Chinese descent, Guggenheim Fellow in 2009, Pao-Lu Hsu Prize (2013), presented every three years by the International Chinese Statistical Association to individuals under the age of 50, Guy Medal in Silver (2014), presented once a year by Royal Statistical Society, Noether Distinguished Scholar Award (2018), presented once a year by American Statistical Association, Le Cam Award and Lectures (2021), presented by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics once every 3 years, and the election to the fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science, Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and American Statistical Association. Academician from Academia Sinica in 2012 and and Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium.
Fan has many affiliations within Princeton University and around worldwide. At Princeton, he is associated with 10 departments and centers, from economics and finance to computer science and computational biology. He has been on scientific advisory boards to many institutions. These include Institute of Economics (2007--2019), Academia Sinica, Statistics and Applied Mathematics Sciences Institute (2008--2014), Institute of Mathematical Sciences (2011--2016), National University of Singapore, Department of Business Statistics and Econometrics (co-chair, 09--19), Center for Statistical Science (10--19), Peking University, Center for Applied Statistics and Economics(10--19), Humboldt University, among others
His research on statistics theory and methods has been funded by various federal agencies, including NSF, NIH, ONR and NSA. He has been frequently invited to various professional conferences and workshops and played various leadership roles in statistics and finance communities.