The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has appointed Statistics Professor, Xiaofeng Shao, as the newest Data Science Founder Scholar. The named scholars program aims to recognize outstanding members of the faculty and to provide each with a funding allocation to enhance her or his scholarly activities. 

Dr. Shao received his PhD in Statistics from the University of Chicago in 2006 and has since been a faculty member with the Department of Statistics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Shao gained rank of full Professor in 2016, the same year he became the Director of the Statistics PhD program. Dr. Shaos' research areas include big data analytics, econometrics, functional data analysis, time series analysis, as well as other fields of statistics and data sciences. Including this honor, Dr. Shao has also been the recipient of other prestigious awards during his career, including Arnold O. Beckman Research Award in 2010, the UIUC LAS Centennial Scholar from 2013-2016, a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 2019, a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2020 and multiple listings on the University of Illinois List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by their students. Additionally, Dr. Shao has served as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Time Series Analysis, Journal of the American Statistical Association Theory and Method, and Journal of Multivariate Analysis. 

Dr. Shao's. continued work and contributions to the field of statistics and data science, as well as development of future scholars, is just part of the reason he has been named a Data Science Founder Scholar.