Victor Panaretos, new Associate Professor of Mathematical Statistics

Panaretos completed his undergraduate studies in Mathematics and Statistics at the Athens University of Economics and Business and at Trinity College Dublin. He continued his graduate studies at the University of California at Berkeley, where he received a PhD in Statistics. His doctorate work drew much attention from the field and was awarded the Erich L. Lehmann Prize for an Outstanding PhD Thesis in Theoretical Statistics. At the age of 24, Panaretos became the youngest faculty member ever to hold a chaired position at EPFL, and in 2010 he became one of the youngest candidates ever to be awarded a highly-competitive ERC grant, which was one of the two ever awarded in the field of statistics.

His research in statistics focuses on the analysis of random functions and their interactions with stochastic geometry, statistical inverse problems, and mathematical biology. The driving force behind his work is the need for the development of statistical theory and methods for addressing complex data structures arising in the physical and biological sciences. The mathematical description of such structures typically requires abstract formalisms for which many traditional statistical techniques are inadequate, calling for new theory. This has led Panaretos to cross intra- and inter-disciplinary boundaries and bring his expertise to bear upon problems that arise in applications like random tomography of single particles, analysis of DNA minicircle dynamics, shape homology of biological macromolecules, forecasting the evolution of epidemics, and measuring fundamental particle spectra at the Large Hadron Collider.

Following his promotion to Associate Professor, Panaretos is looking forward to expanding his research agenda, in order to provide an overarching framework that will encompass even more complex structures. He intends to pursue his work with functional data analysis as a focal point, with the aim to develop spectral methods for estimation and uncertainty quantification. With a team already consisting of seven additional members (the Chair of Mathematical Statistics counts five PhD students and two postdocs), he intends to keep pushing the boundaries of his field.

“I was quite adventurous in my choice of research topics from early on”, he says. “Tenure allows one to focus completely on the science itself, without extrinsic distractions. But, on matters of research style, being adventurous in research has been rewarding thus far, and so I plan to continue being so”.