P R E S S   R E L E A S E

         Professor Chan Ngai-hang, Professor of Statistics at CUHK has been elected to Fellowship in the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS), an honour bestowed on 20 some members who have outstanding research contributions in the field the world over each year.  Founded in 1935, IMS is an international professional and scholarly society devoted to the development, dissemination, and application of statistics and probability.  The Institute currently has about 3,000 members. 

         Professor Chan was awarded the prestigious Fellowship for his path breaking contributions to the study of unstable time series, for applications of time series to economics and finance, and for the development of the statistical programmes in computational finance and risk management.  The applications of time series to economics and finance are conducive to financial institutions, namely banks and insurance companies, in drawing accurate credit analysis.  Financial analysts also benefit from such applications which facilitate computational analysis and projection in the securities and stock markets.  The concept of risk management is gaining notable attention lately in Hong Kong particularly due to the economic downturn when corporations are more cautious of their investments.  With the aim to train talents in the emerging field, Professor Chan played a pivotal role in the initiation of the new undergraduate programme in risk management at CUHK back in 2000. 

         An alumnus of CUHK's Department of Mathematics, Professor Chan furthered his studies in the U.S. and obtained his PhD in the University of Maryland.  He worked with the U.S. Bureau of the Census for a year after gaining his doctoral degree and started his academic career with the Indiana University.  In 1990, he joined Carnegie Mellon University as Professor of Statistics for a decade before returning to CUHK in 2000.  In between those years, Professor Chan spent two years at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology to set up a statistics group within their Mathematics Department.  Currently, he is Professor of Statistics and Director of Studies of the Risk Management Programme in the Department of Statistics at CUHK.