The Statistics Program at UNC was founded by Harold Hotelling in 1946 and  is one of the oldest statistics programs in the country.  Early faculty members included H. Robbins, W. Hoeffding, P.L. Hsu, R.C. Bose, and S.N. Roy.  The Statistics group is at the center of the Department’s research mission.  Statistics faculty are active inside and outside the University, with research strengths and interests in theory, methodology, and applications.

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 statistics.  Group members are engaged in basic theory, the development of new statistical methods, and the creation of statistical software.  Members of the Statistics group have developed methodology in collaboration with researchers in a number of fields, including genetics, genomics, medical imaging, biology, biomedicine, social sciences, and bioinformatics.

Members of the Statistics group are active in professional organizations and editorial boards, and are funded from a variety of external sources, including the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.  They have been active in the founding and the ongoing programs of the NSF funded Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute (SAMSI), which is located in the Research Triangle close to the UNC Campus.