(I) Background and Philosophy of School Development
The School adheres to the development philosophy of "data-driven interdisciplinary integration and problem-oriented closed-loop development of theory and practice." The State Council's "Action Plan for Promoting Big Data Development" explicitly states: through promoting big data development, accelerate the construction of a data-strong nation, unleash technological dividends, institutional dividends, and innovation dividends, enhance government governance capabilities, and drive economic transformation and upgrading. Therefore, the School's development solidly serves national strategies through data-driven interdisciplinary integration and problem-oriented closed-loop development of theory and practice, collaborating with multiple schools and disciplines for synergistic development.
(II) Development Strategy and Objectives
Building upon the foundational strength in statistics as a science discipline, the School aims to vigorously develop four major disciplinary directions: mathematical statistics, machine learning, data science, and artificial intelligence. It systematically establishes an AI+X interdisciplinary system to better serve Southeast University's disciplinary layout of strong engineering, quality liberal arts, and distinctive medical sciences. The School comprises three departments: Theoretical Statistics, Applied Statistics, and Data Science, plus a Big Data Laboratory Center that provides various big data application scenarios for faculty and students.
The School consistently takes disciplinary development as its leading focus, driving the development of scientific research, talent cultivation, and social service.
In terms of disciplinary development, the School leverages its foundational strength in statistics to consolidate its disciplinary foundation. Through strengthening basic discipline construction, it aims to create internationally first-class, domestically top-tier statistics disciplines leading Jiangsu Province. The School implements a top talent navigation plan, focusing on statistics, machine learning, data science, and artificial intelligence, deploying four major disciplines (mathematical statistics, machine learning, data science, artificial intelligence), promoting science-engineering integration throughout, targeting urgent key fields, and constructing AI for Science/Social Science and other key initiatives. The ultimate goal is to achieve a top-20 global QS ranking in data science and an A-level rating for statistics and data science in disciplinary evaluations.
In terms of scientific research, the School consistently pursues the goal of "academic excellence, conducting world-class scientific research; serving the nation, breaking through industry technical bottlenecks," working around frontier, academic, national, social, and industry dimensions. The School targets cutting-edge fields such as statistical machine learning, biomedical statistics, and financial big data to build four international frontier teams, establishing long-term collaborative mechanisms with top institutions like CMU and Stanford to promote academic integration, supporting national strategies for data power, pharmaceutical innovation, and financial security, solving "bottleneck" problems, providing customized solutions for enterprises, and embedding research outcomes directly into production lines. It builds big data computing platforms to support the creation of an autonomous and controllable full-spectrum technology ecosystem, producing internationally influential research results with breakthroughs in top journals like CNS and PNAS, achieving international excellence in multiple fields, forming a distinctive Southeast University statistical school, and demonstrating Southeast University's influence.
In terms of teaching and talent cultivation,the School is dedicated to cultivating new-era interdisciplinary talents with patriotic sentiments, international perspectives, solid mathematical foundations, and capabilities to solve large-scale application problems. Through constructing talent cultivation models with new-era characteristics and international perspectives, leveraging foundational science advantages to support interdisciplinary talent cultivation across disciplines, it creates a high-quality education paradigm for statistics and data science with Southeast University characteristics.
In terms of industry-academia-research integration, the School benchmarks against world-class universities, improves industry-academia-research mechanisms, mobilizes internal and external resources, and creates an integrated ecosystem for statistics, data, and AI industry-academia-research collaboration. It rapidly advances three important tasks: formulating incentive policies, building industry-education collaborative platforms, and establishing think tank alliances, further accelerating the transformation and implementation of scientific research, forming Southeast University's golden brand in "Statistics and Data Science" industry-academia-research integration. The School will establish the Jiangsu Province "Statistics and Data Science" Think Tank Alliance, serving as the leading institution and forming a distinctive brand.
