Professor Bo Li has accepted an offer to serve a three-year term as Chair of the Department of Statistics effective August 16, 2019. It was announced earlier this year that current Chair, Professor Douglas Simpson, would step down from the role when his term expires on August 16. Professor Simpson had been on sabbatical for the 2018-2019 academic year while Professor Jeffery Douglas had assumed the role of the interim Chair. Professor Simpson has served as Chair since August 2000.  

"She is an excellent scholar whose experience as a leader and collaborator in research will serve the department well," College of Liberal Arts & Science Dean Feng Sheng Hu stated in a recent announcement congratulating Bo Li on her new role within the department.

Due in no small part to the contributions that both Professors Simpson and Douglas have ushered in during their tenure as Chair, the Department of Statistics has seen tremendous growth in interest in statistics and data science over the last several years. As the department continues to evolve and grow during this exciting time we look forward to being led by Professor Bo Li as she begins this new chapter in the Department of Statistics.

Dr. Bo Li received her PhD in Statistics from Texas A&M University in 2006, and then became a Post-Doc at National Center for Atmospheric Research before joining the Purdue faculty 2008. In 2013 she moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and as of August 2018 is now a Full Professor in the Department of Statistics.

Dr. Li’s research mainly focuses on spatial and spatio-temporal statistics and environmental statistics concerning problems in climatology, atmospheric sciences, public health, forestry and agriculture. Professor Li has served on the editorial boards of several journals including the Journal of the American Statistical Association and Environmetrics, and was guest editor for a special issue in Statistica Sinica and special issue in Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics. Her research has been funded by the  NSF, NIH, NASA and Sandia National Laboratories. Professor Li was the recipient of the Young Investigator Award in the ASA section on statistics and the environment and received the campus-wide Teaching for Tomorrow Award while on the Purdue faculty.  Professor Li was recently awarded a fellowship with the Center of Advanced Studies at University of Illinois, and was selected as a 2019 Fellow of the American Statistical Association.