History and General Information

History and General Information

The Statistics Department was established in 1946 at the initiative of Professor Gertrude Cox.  Professor Harold Hotelling served as the Department's first chairman.  Since 1948, the Statistics Program at UNC has awarded over 200 Ph.D. degrees, and has been home to foundational work in the fields of experimental design, coding theory, multivariate analysis, estimation and hypothesis testing, sequential analysis, renewal theory, and stochastic processes.  Our graduates have assumed leadership positions in academia, government, industry, and many professional organizations.

The Department's current research profile is broad, encompassing applied statistics, theoretical statistics and probability.  Faculty research interests include time series, functional data analysis, spatial statistics, machine learning, stochastic analysis, long-range dependence, resampling methods, multivariate analysis, data mining, and computational genomics. 

Many of the program's current faculty members are engaged in cross-disciplinary research projects with research scientists outside the Department.  In most cases, collaborating scientists are also at UNC, but some projects involve researchers from other universities, local industry and government organizations.  Current faculty collaborations include researchers from the following departments and schools within UNC:

• Biology,
  
• Biostatistics 
• Carolina Center for Genome Sciences
• Environmental Sciences and Engineering
  
• Computer Science 
• Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center 
• School of Pharmacy
• Toxicology
   

In addition, Statistics faculty and students are involved in the many research programs organized by the Statistical and Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (SAMSI) and the National Institute for Statistical Science (NISS), both of which are located nearby UNC in Research Triangle Park.

Graduate students are an integral part of the cross-disciplinary and intra-disciplinary projects undertaken by Statistics Program faculty.  Graduate students work directly with Statistics faculty and their collaborators, and often interact with students from Statistics and other programs as well.  Through these interactions, our graduate students gain valuable first hand experience with collaborative work and communication skills, and they typically learn about the essential subject matter and technologies of other fields as well.

At present, Statistics and Operations Research faculty and staff and students are located in the Hanes Building, near the center of the historic UNC campus.   Ph.D. students are provided with office space, and have ready access to computers and computing facilities administered by the Department and the University.

Chapel Hill

Chapel Hill can be at once invigorating and serene, contemporary and old-fashioned. Since its founding 200 years ago, Chapel Hill's progressive spirit has grown with the times. It is named after the New Hope Chapel which stood upon a hill at the crossing of two dirt roads where the Carolina Inn now stands. Legend holds that the location of Chapel Hill and the university were decided one day in 1792 when a group charged with picking a site for the state's university took a break from the search to relax in the shade of a tulip poplar near the chapel. Impressed with the location, it was selected as the site and, in 1793 work began on constructing the first building of the university. Although it still calls itself a town, and some residents think of it as a village, Chapel Hill is a bustling community, the largest in Orange county, and affectionately known as the Southern Part of Heaven. There are now 45,000 residents and a dazzling array of cultural and sporting activities. From Chapel Hill there is easy access to the Appalachian Mountains in the western part of the state with abundant trails, ski slopes, folk art, and music, and to the Coast with its beautiful beaches and historic areas including New Bern, Kitty Hawk, Okracoke, and Wilmington.

Research Triangle Park

Research Triangle Park, set in sixty-eight hundred acres of pinelands, is the largest among the 115 university-related research parks in the United States. Over 34,000 people work in the park for the 55 companies and institutions there, which include IBM, Bell Northern, Glaxo-Wellcome, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Research Triangle Institute, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the National Institute of Statistical Sciences, and the National Humanities Center. SAS Institute is located nearby in Cary, NC. The wide spectrum of fields includes telecommunications, environmental sciences, pharmaceuticals, microelectronics, biotechnology, chemistry,toxicology, and statistics.