Tianwen Tony Cai (; born March, 1967) is a Chinese

statistician A statistician is a person who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, and statisticians may wor ...

. He is the Daniel H. Silberberg Professor of Statistics and Vice Dean at the

Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania ( ; also known as Wharton Business School, the Wharton School, Penn Wharton, and Wharton) is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, a Private university, private Ivy League rese ...

. He is also professor of Applied Math & Computational Science Graduate Group, and associate scholar at the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology & Informatics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. In 2008 Tony Cai was awarded the

COPSS Presidents' Award The COPSS Presidents' Award is given annually by the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies to a young statistician in recognition of outstanding contributions to the profession of statistics. The COPSS Presidents' Award is generally ...

Early life and education

Cai was born in

Rui'an Rui'an (, Wenzhounese: ''zy iu'') is a county-level city along the southern coast of Zhejiang province, China, and is under the administration of Wenzhou City. It has a population of 1,125,000 people and covers a land area of , when including wat ...

Wenzhou Wenzhou (pronounced ; Wenzhounese: Yuziou �y33–11 tɕiɤu33–32 ), historically known as Wenchow is a prefecture-level city in southeastern Zhejiang province in the People's Republic of China. Wenzhou is located at the extreme south east o ...

Zhejiang Zhejiang ( or , ; , also romanized as Chekiang) is an eastern, coastal province of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Hangzhou, and other notable cities include Ningbo and Wenzhou. Zhejiang is bordered by Jiang ...

, China. In 1986, he graduated from the Department of Mathematics,

Hangzhou University Hangzhou University (), colloquially called Hangda () and formerly romanised as Hangchow University, was a public university in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. The university was founded as Zhejiang Teachers College () in 1952 by merging the department ...

(previous and current Department of Mathematics,

Zhejiang University Zhejiang University, abbreviated as ZJU or Zheda and formerly romanized as Chekiang University, is a national public research university based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. It is a member of the prestigious C9 League and is selected into the na ...

), at 18 years old. In 1989, he then received an M.Sc. from

Shanghai Jiao Tong University Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU; ) is a public research university in Shanghai, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education of China. The university was established on April 8, 1896 as Nanyang Public School (南洋� ...

and in 1996, earned a PhD from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

Career

Tony Cai was appointed the Dorothy Silberberg Professor at the

from July 1, 2007 to July 31, 2018 and has been the Daniel H. Silberberg Professor at Wharton since August 1, 2018. Cai has been the Vice Dean of the Wharton School since August 1, 2017. Tony Cai's research focuses on high-dimensional statistics, statistical machine learning, large-scale inference, nonparametric function estimation,

functional data analysis Functional data analysis (FDA) is a branch of statistics that analyses data providing information about curves, surfaces or anything else varying over a continuum. In its most general form, under an FDA framework, each sample element of functional ...

, and

statistical decision theory Decision theory (or the theory of choice; not to be confused with choice theory) is a branch of applied probability theory concerned with the theory of making decisions based on assigning probabilities to various factors and assigning numerical ...

, and applications to genomics, compressed sensing, chemical identification,

medical imaging Medical imaging is the technique and process of imaging the interior of a body for clinical analysis and medical intervention, as well as visual representation of the function of some organs or tissues (physiology). Medical imaging seeks to rev ...

, and financial engineering. Tony Cai was elected a Fellow of the

Institute of Mathematical Statistics The Institute of Mathematical Statistics is an international professional and scholarly society devoted to the development, dissemination, and application of statistics and probability. The Institute currently has about 4,000 members in all parts o ...

in 2006. In 2008, he received the COPSS Presidents’ Award from the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies. In 2009, Tony Cai was named the Medallion Lecturer at the

. In 2017, he was elected to the presidency of International Chinese Statistical Association (ICSA).

Additional affiliations and memberships

Tony Cai was a co-editor of the leading statistics journal, the

Annals of Statistics The ''Annals of Statistics'' is a peer-reviewed statistics journal published by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. It was started in 1973 as a continuation in part of the '' Annals of Mathematical Statistics (1930)'', which was split into th ...

from 2010 to 2012. He has also served on editorial boards of several other journals, including Journal of the American Statistical Association (JASA), Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B (JRSSB), '' Statistics Surveys'', ''and Statistica Sinica.''

Honors and awards

* Fellow,

, 2006. *

2008, Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies.Presidents’ Award:Past Award Recipients.
Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies. Accessed December 25, 2009. Award citation: ''For fundamental and wide-ranging contributions to the mathematics, theory and methods of statistics, including the theory and application of wavelets, block thresholding in wavelet regression, optimality theory, adaptation in nonparametric function estimation, confidence intervals in small samples, and methods for false discovery rate control; for applications to chemical identification, medical imaging and microarray data analysis; and for outstanding contributions to the statistical profession through extensive editorial work and mentorship of students.''

Personal life

Cai has four brothers and one sister. His sister

Tianxi Cai Tianxi Cai ( zh, 蔡天西) is a Chinese biostatistician. She is the John Rock Professor of Population and Translational Data Sciences in the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Topics in her research inc ...

is the John Rock Professor of Population and Translational Data Sciences in the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is also a professor at Harvard Medical School. Topics in her research include biomarkers, personalized medicine, survival analysis, and health informatics. His brother Tianwu Michael Cai, majored in

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

(PhD, Rochester) is a

vice-president A vice president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vice president is on t ...

Goldman Sachs Goldman Sachs () is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered at 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan, with regional headquarters in London, Warsaw, Bangalore, H ...

. Tony Cai has two children, a son and daughter.

External links

T. Tony Cai's homepage at the Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania

校友蔡天文荣获国际统计学“考普斯”奖 (Zhejiang University (ZJU) news: Alumnus T.Tony Cai wins 2008 COPSS Presidents' Award)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cai, T. Tony 1967 births Living people Scientists from Wenzhou Zhejiang University alumni Hangzhou University alumni Cornell University alumni Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania faculty Shanghai Jiao Tong University alumni Fellows of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics People from Rui'an Chinese statisticians Chinese emigrants to the United States American statisticians Mathematicians from Zhejiang Educators from Wenzhou Purdue University faculty Annals of Statistics editors