Strengthening research and teaching at the GSEM through integrating resources and knowledge

The GSEM’s Research Center for Statistics and the Information Science Institute have merged to form the Research Institute for Statistics and Information Science. The Institute’s goal is to contribute to the advancement of society by empowering individuals and stakeholders with skills and methods to make evidence-based decisions under uncertainty, and to solve complex and data-rich problems through the application of statistics, analytics, and information science.

The merger of statistics and informatics follows the practice of leading academic institutions and recognizes the principle that statistics needs data, and informatics benefits from being enriched by sound data analytical methods (i.e., statistics) to go beyond providing platform surfaces to manage data.

The new Institute, under the directorship of Professor Stefan Sperlich, is a starting point for increasingly intertwined cooperation in research and teaching and for the development of data science as a potential new discipline within the GSEM. The modern conception of data science as a discipline is often attributed to William S. Cleveland, a Professor of Statistics and Computer Science at Purdue University. He advocated an expansion of statistics beyond theory into technical areas and in its original definition, statistics and informatics are the fundamental pillars on which data science is based.

By combining the strong collaborations and multidisciplinary research teams of the Information Science Institute with the Research Center for Statistics’ active contribution to the creation and improvement of statistical methods and techniques, the Research Institute for Statistics and Information Science is well-positioned to advance knowledge and understanding in the fields of statistics, analytics, and information science.