ISI Academy - Pathways to Global Postgraduate Education in Statistics, Biostatistics, and Data Science

Alexandra Schmidt is a Professor of McGill University. She is internationally recognised for her contributions to Bayesian spatial and spatio-temporal statistics. Schmidt served as President of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA) in 2015 and is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute, a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and the International Society for Bayesian Analysis. Her research has advanced the modelling of complex spatial processes. She has received several distinctions, including the Distinguished Achievement Medal from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and the Environment for her contributions to spatial statistics.

Ansgar Steland is a German mathematician and Professor of Stochastics at RWTH Aachen University. Since 2006, he has held the Chair of Stochastics within the Institute of Statistics and Mathematical Economics. His research focuses on statistical inference, time series analysis, change-point detection, high-dimensional statistics, econometrics, machine learning, and stochastic processes. Steland has also held academic positions at the Technical University of Berlin, the European University Viadrina, and Ruhr University Bochum. He is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute and has played leading roles in several German statistical societies and research networks.

Karthik Bharath is a Professor of Statistics at the University of Nottingham, UK. His research interests are in geometric statistics, functional and shape data analysis, stochastic processes, and quantum information, supported by funding from the National Science Foundation (USA), National Institutes of Health (USA), and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, U.K. He is also the Chair of the Research Section of the Royal Statistical Society, and an Associate Editor of Biometrika.

Noel Cressie is Distinguished Professor, University of Wollongong. He has (co-)authored four books, including "Statistics for Spatial Data"; (1991/1993/2015), "Statistics for Spatio-Temporal Data" (2011/2015), and "Spatio-Temporal Statistics with R" (2019) and published over 350 articles/chapters/reviews/discussions. He is a world leader in environmental informatics. Noel’s
awards include the international R.A. Fisher Award (2009), Australia’s Pitman Medal (2014), and the Hannan Medal (2025). In the discipline of Mathematics, Research.com ranks him first in Australia and 86th in the world. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (2018) and of the Royal Society of NSW (2020), amongst other fellowships.

Philip Yu is a Professor at the Department of Mathematics and Information Technology, and the Associate Director of the University Research Facility of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at the Education University of Hong Kong. He currently serves as an Executive Committee Member of the International Association of Statistical Computing. His current research interests include statistical methods and machine learning for ranking data, data science and AI in education and healthcare, time series analysis, and environmental statistics. He has authored over 170 publications, including two well-reviewed research monographs on ranking methodology, and has received multiple international invention awards.

Ying Chen is an applied mathematician. Her current research includes AI forecasting and optimisation, quantum computing x AI, credit modelling and rating, citation analysis and research metrics, etc. Dr. Chen is Associate Professor in Department of Mathematics, Director of Centre for Quantitative Finance, PI of Asian Institute of Digital Finance. She also holds Joint Appointment in Risk Management Institute, National University of Singapore. She is Council Member of the International Statistical Institute for the period 2023 – 2027 and President for Society of Algorithmic Intelligence for 2025-2027.