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Hong Kong's scientific talent received significant recognition again. The National Office for Science and Technology Awards in Beijing announced today (January 8) that Professor Shao Qiman of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) has been awarded the second-class State Natural Science Awards (SNSA) 2015 for his research project on "Self-normalised Limit Theory and Stein's Method". The project, belonging to the field of probability and statistics, was nominated by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government.
"The outstanding achievements of Professor Shao highlight Hong Kong's excellent capabilities in basic and applied research, and serve as motivation to fellow researchers," a Government spokesman said. "We congratulate Professor Shao and hope Hong Kong researchers will continue to scale new heights in their scientific research."
The SNSA are one of five categories of awards under the State Science and Technology Awards organised by the State Council. As China's most prestigious award in the field of natural science, the SNSA aim to reward individuals for academic excellence in basic and applied research in natural science.
Professor Shao's winning project systematically developed the self-normalised asymptotic limit theory and Stein's method for normal distribution and non-normal distribution approximation. Large sample asymptotic limit theory is a foundation of probability and statistics and plays a key role in statistical inference and other applications. The achievements in Professor Shao's project have been widely used in high dimensional statistical inference and in controlling the false discovery rate. It is hoped that they will also play an important role in big data statistical analysis.
Professor Shao is at present Chairman of the Department of Statistics at CUHK. The winning project was completed at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). Professor Jing Bingyi of HKUST is another core member of the project team.
The HKSAR Government was invited by the National Office for Science and Technology Awards to submit nominations from Hong Kong, which were co-ordinated by the Education Bureau with the help of the Hong Kong Research Grants Council and the Beijing-Hong Kong Academic Exchange Centre.
Ends/Friday, January 8, 2016
Issued at HKT 15:03
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