UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Runze Li, holder of the Eberly Family Chair in Statistics, has been named an Evan Pugh Professor, the highest honor that Penn State bestows on a faculty member. Li is one of five Penn State faculty to be so named in 2026.
The professorships are named for Penn State’s founding president, Evan Pugh, a renowned chemist and scholar who was at the helm of the University from 1859 to 1864.
The Evan Pugh University Professorships are awarded to faculty members who are nationally or internationally recognized leaders in their fields of research or creative activity; demonstrate significant leadership in raising the standards of the University with respect to teaching, research or creativity and service; display excellent teaching skills with undergraduate and graduate students who go on to achieve distinction in their fields; and receive support from colleagues who also are leaders in their disciplines.
“Over his 25 years of service at Penn State, Runze Li has distinguished himself as one of the most highly recognized leaders in the field of statistics, having substantially advanced statistical theory and methodology,” said Nicole Lazar, head of the Department of Statistics at Penn State. “He is also an extraordinary mentor to scholars at all stages of their careers as an outstanding teacher at all levels, consistently earning exceptional student evaluations.”
Li is particularly well-known for his pioneering contributions to high-dimensional data analysis, which have shaped modern statistical methodology research and underpin the foundational principles used in today’s machine learning and artificial intelligence. He is also interested in nonparametric modeling, semiparametric modeling, longitudinal data analysis and survival data analysis. His contributions have spurred applications across a wide range of disciplines, including the social sciences, environmental sciences, meteorology, genetics, bioinformatics and neuroscience.
Li is a fellow of Institute of Mathematical Statistics, American Statistical Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His honors and awards include the U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2004, the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization Gerbier-Mumm International Award in 2012, the International Chinese Statistical Association Distinguished Achievement Award in 2017, and a Faculty Research Recognition Award for Outstanding Collaborative Research by the Penn State College of Medicine in 2018. Li was also honored with the Penn State Eberly College of Science’s Distinguished Mentoring Award in 2023 and the Harry C. Carver Medal from the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 2024. He has delivered more than 50 distinguished lectures, named lectures, plenary lectures and keynote speeches at universities and international statistical conferences, including the Peter Hall Memorial Lecture at the 2018 Conference of the International Society of Nonparametric Statistics in Salerno, Italy, and the 2023 IMS Medallion Lecture at the Joint Statistical Meetings in Toronto, Canada. He was co-editor of the Annals of Statistics from 2013 to 2015, is serving as co-editor elect of the Journal of the American Statistical Association (JASA) and will be co-editor of the JASA from 2027 to 2029, respectively.
Li has published nearly 300 scientific papers and two books, and he has been recognized by several organizations for high impact of these publications. He was named a Highly Cited Researcher in Mathematics by Clarivate (formerly Thomson Reuters) from 2014 to 2020 and in Cross-Field in 2022. He was also ranked in the world’s top 2% scientists ranked by Stanford University from 2019 to 2025 and as a Top Scholar — top 0.5% of all scholars worldwide — by ScholarGPS in 2024 and 2025.
Before joining the faculty at Penn State, Li earned a doctoral degree in statistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2000. He joined the faculty at Penn State in 2000 and was promoted to associate professor in 2005 and to professor in 2008. He served as the chair of Penn State’s graduate program in statistics from 2007 to 2012 and from 2024 to present. Li also served as the associate department head of statistics from 2018 to 2023 and was named distinguished professor of statistics in 2012, Verne M. Willaman Professor of Statistics in 2014 and holder of the Eberly Family Chair in Statistics in 2018.