Xiao-Li Meng - Professor of Statistics and Department Chair, Harvard University

Xiao-Li Meng

Xiao-Li Meng is an award-winning Chinese-American statistician, and the Whipple V. N. Jones Professor of Statistics at Harvard University. He received the COPSS Presidents' Award in 2001. He has written numerous research papers about Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms and other statistical methodology.

Since 2001 Meng has been Chair of Harvard's Department of Statistics, where he has helped create innovative new statistics courses designed to give students a more positive impression of the subject. He edited the journals Bayesian Analysis from 2003 to 2005 and Statistica Sinica from 2005 to 2008.

Meng received his B.Sc. from Fudan University(复旦大学) in 1982 and his Ph.D. in statistics from Harvard University in 1990. He was elected a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 1997 and of the American Statistical Association in 2004.5]

Whipple V. N. Jones Professor of Statistics and Department Chair

Research Interests
• Statistical inference with partially observed data, pre-processed data, and simulated data.
• Quantifying statistical information and efficiency in scientific studies, particularly for genetic and environmental problems.
• Statistical principles and foundational issues, such as multi-party inferences, the theory of ignorance, and the interplay between Bayesian and frequentist perspectives.
• Effective deterministic and stochastic algorithms for Bayesian and likelihood computation; Markov chain Monte Carlo, especially perfect sampling.
• Bayesian inference, ranking and mapping.
• Multi-resolution modelling for signal and image data.
• Statistical issues in astronomy and astrophysics.
• Modelling and imputation in health and medical studies.
• Elegant mathematical statistics.
Education
• 1990: Ph.D. in Statistics - Harvard University
• 1987: M.A. in Statistics - Harvard University
• 1986: Diploma in Graduate Study of Mathematical Statistics - Research Institute of Mathematics, Fudan University, Shanghai, P.R. China
• 1982: B.S. in Mathematics - Fudan University, Shanghai, P.R. China
Experience
• 2001 - present: Professor, Department of Statistics, Harvard University
• 2001 - 2005: Research Associate (Professor), Department of Statistics and the College, The University of Chicago
• 1991 - 2001: Assistant/Associate/Full Professor, Department of Statistics and the College, The University of Chicago
• 1993 - present: Faculty Research Associate, Population Research Center, National Opinion Research Center (NORC), The University of Chicago
• 1982 - 1984: Instructor of Mathematics, Department of Basic Science, China Textile University, Shanghai, P.R. China
Sample Publications
• Nicolae, D., Meng, X.L., and Kong, A. (2008) Quantifying the Fraction of Missing Information for Hypothesis Testing in Statistical and Genetic Studies (with discussion). Statistical Science 23, 287-331. Main paper (287-312) and Rejoinder (325-331).
• Kong, A., McCullagh, P. Meng, X.L., Nicolae, D. and Tan, Z. (2003). A Theory of Statistical Models for Monte Carlo Integration (with discussion). Journal of the Royal Statistical Society B 65, 585-618; JSTOR.
• van Dyk, D.A. and Meng, X.L. (2001). The Art of Data Augmentation (with discussion). Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics 10, 1-111. Main paper (1-50) and Rejoinder (98-111).
• Meng, X.L. and van Dyk, D.A. (1997). The EM Algorithm - An Old Folk Song Sung to a Fast New Tune (with discussion). Journal of the Royal Statistical Society B 59, 511 - 567; JSTOR.
• Gelman, A.E., Meng, X.L. and Stern, H. (1996). Posterior Predictive Assessment of Model Fitness via Realized Discrepancies (with discussion). Statistica Sinica 6, 733-807.
• Meng, X.L. (1994). Multiple-Imputation Inference with Uncongenial Sources of Input (with discussion). Statistical Science 9, 538-573. Main paper (538-558) and Rejoinder (566-573).
Curriculum Vitae (contains links to some lecture videos and articles)
http://www.stat.harvard.edu/faculty_page.php?page=meng.html