Kiseop Lee named Korean International Statistical Society president
01-08-2025
The Korean International Statistical Society (KISS) has announced that Kiseop Lee, associate professor of Statistics at Purdue University, will serve as the seventh president of the organization. KISS is a non-profit corporation that is organized and operated for educational, charitable and scientific purposes.
“KISS is one of 13 organizations consisting of Joint Statistical Meetings(JSM), which is the largest statistics meeting in the world”, says Lee. “Being a president of such an academic society is considered as the highest level of service to the profession. Personally, I have worked as the executive director and on the board of directors for many years. I've watched that KISS has grown a lot in the last ten years. In the era of data science, KISS faces new challenges and opportunities, like other statistics societies. I am happy to serve as a leader in this critical moment. I am also excited to work with other statistical associations such as ASA, ICSA, IISA actively. This eventually will broaden my sights on statistics and help me to contribute more to the department and the profession.”
Lee’s research area is quantitative finance, including stochastic analysis, statistical inference, and machine learning as main tools. Quantitative finance is considered as an interdisciplinary area with a relatively long history.
“Traditionally, quantitative finance was considered as an application of stochastic analysis. However, in recent years, the focus has been diversified to various methods of machine learning, and data scientific methods,” says Lee. “Among my Ph.D/MS students, some are doing more traditional math-oriented research while others are using more computational and applied approaches. Last year, I gave the plenary public lecture on the history of quantitative finance (Title: Statistics Meets Wall Street) at the Korean Statistics Society (KSS) annual meeting. I am also in charge of MS data science in finance program in our department.”
KISS was formed as the current form in 2010 by the efforts of Korean American statisticians and became the organization member of JSM. An organization has to meet several criteria to be qualified as a member organization of JSM. KISS publishes an academic journal "Communications for Statistical Applications and Methods (CSAM)”, holds annual conference with Korean Statistics Society(KSS), and recognizes early career awards, students paper awards, etc.
“I have been involved in KISS activities even before KISS became the current form and was nominated and served as an officer and a board member from 2016,” says Lee. He will serve as president-elect (2025-2026), president (2027-2028), and past-president (2029-2030).
About the Department of Statistics at Purdue University
Our mission is to advance the frontiers of statistical sciences and data science in both theory and applications; to provide learning environments that produce well-educated data scientists, statisticians, probabilists, and quantitatively literate people; and to join with others in bringing the strengths of the statistical sciences to address societal needs. The Department offers the degrees of Bachelor of Science, Graduate Certificate, Master of Science, Online Master of Applied Statistics, and Ph.D. in Statistics. Our programs prepare students for careers in both industry and academia and prepare them to be leaders in their fields. The Department of Statistics is part of the College of Science at Purdue University and is housed in the Mathematical Sciences Building in West Lafayette, Indiana. Learn more about the department at stat.purdue.edu.