Statistics & Operations Research

The Department of Statistics and Operations Research specializes in inference, decision-making, and data analysis involving complex models and systems exhibiting both deterministic and random behavior. We focus on developing and analyzing the necessary quantitative and computational tools to enable practitioners to solve problems in statistical and probabilistic analysis, modeling, optimization, and the evaluation of system performance.
Our research work is at the core of Data Science, Machine Learning/AI, Analytics, Network Science and related fields.

News

Welcome to the 2022 annual issue of STORies, which looks back at the department’s past academic year...

New faculty

The Statistics and Operations Research Department would like to welcome our newest faculty members...

ASA award

Haixu Ma won the student paper competition award of ASA's Biopharmaceutical Section...

FRG grant

Zhang and Li have been awarded a Focused Research Group (FRG) grant from the NSF...

More News…

Research

Optimization

The research of the Optimization group covers a wide range of topics, such as convex and variational analysis, semidefinite programming, convex and nonconvex programming, complementarity problems and variational inequalities, integer programming, and optimal control…

Probability

The Probability group encompasses a wide range of research interests and research expertise including, Extreme Value Theory and stochastic dynamical systems with applications in Engineering, Oceanographic, Environmental and Biomedical sciences; Stochastic Analysis, Large Deviations…

Statistics

The research interests and expertise of the Statistics group encompass many active areas of statistical research and application, including inference for complex data, time series, and dynamical systems, machine learning, network analysis, environmental statistics, statistical genomics, and financial…

Stochastic Modeling

The Stochastic Modeling group mainly focuses on decision making under uncertainty in complex, dynamic systems, and emphasizes practical relevance. Standard stochastic methodological and modeling techniques like discrete and continuous-time Markov chains, renewal and regenerative…

Teaching

The department runs highly popular Statistics and Analytics (STAN) major and minor, and partners for Data Science (DS) minor. Our offerings include “Foundations of Statistics and Data Science” (STOR 120), “Introduction to Data Science” (STOR 320), “Sports Analytics” (STOR 538) and many other highly sought undergraduate courses.

Our graduate MS and Ph.D. programs in Statistics and Operations Research provide challenging and comprehensive training across the full spectrum of STOR.

Outreach

The department runs the UNC Statistical / Data Science Consulting Center, which serves clients across campus and elsewhere. Under the supervision of faculty members, graduate students work with the clients to address their statistical & data science questions.

Separately, STOR graduate students run the Data Outreach Program for Students (Data OPS) aimed at educating local K-12 students in data science topics.