Research at FAST

8 Research Focus The AMA department currently has 3 major research groups: • Applied Statistics and Financial Mathematics • Applied Optimization and Operations Research • Engineering and Computational Mathematics Our Aim We aim to further strengthen our position as a world leading international Applied Mathematics centre of excellence facilitating learning through high quality teaching and research. PolyU has been listed in the world top 100 in Mathematics for 4 consecutive years and in the world top 100 in Statistics and Operational Research for 2 consecutive years by the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Ranking. The latest 2019 U.S. News & World Report ranked PolyU as the 74 th Best Global University for Mathematics. Growing International Presence Our Department invites and provides research funding for excellent researchers to collaborate with our faculty members. We also invite renowned researchers to deliver distinguished lectures, as well as exchange ideas with us, through organizing and hosting international conferences and workshops. In January 2019, our unit and the Department of Computing co- organized the Masters of Abstraction 2019–Laureates of Mathematics and Computer Science Forum. In partnership with the Heidelberg Laureate Forum Foundation, recipients of the renowned ACM Turing Award, ACM Prize in Computing, Fields Medal and international scholars, including Mathematics laureate Professor Efim Zelmanov (1994 Fields Medal awardee), were brought together to share expertise and explore “How AI and Big Data are Driving Innovation”. Increasing Research Power We organize meetings to share grant application experience and provide financial support for external peer reviews and collaborators. The following table shows our Department’s growing track record of winning RGC GRF/ECS grants: Year 15-16 16-17 17-18 18-19 19-20 Funded Grants 8 16 11 16 16 Prof. Ya-xiang Yuan Prof. Luis A Caffarelli On top of RGC grants, our staff have also received grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Council for the AIDS Trust Fund, the Food and Health Bureau, and other industry grant agencies, such as Alibaba, Blue Balloon Innovative, Esquel, Huawei, Value Exchange International and 7-Eleven Stores. International Recognition Our Mathematics and Statistics research has achieved remarkable recognition since 2009. The vast majority (71%) of AMA’s research has achieved a 4-star ‘world leading’ or 3-star ‘internationally excellent’ rating according to the HK University Grants Committee’s Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2014. We will continue to allocate resources to research as well as support and encourage our staff to publish high quality papers in leading international journals and aim to further boost our rankings in the 2020 RAE. Department of Applied Mathematics