Peking University’s 2007 Mathematics Cohort Celebrates Another Global Achievement

On August 5 local time, Weijie Su, Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, received the 2026 COPSS Presidents’ Award at the 2026 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM 2026) held in Boston, United States.

Su was honored for his outstanding contributions, including the statistical foundations of generative AI, particularly in watermarking, alignment, and ranking of large language models (LLMs); advances in privacy-preserving data analysis applied to the 2020 U.S. Decennial Census; improvements to peer review in machine learning; foundational work in convex optimization; and broad contributions to deep learning theory and high-dimensional inference.

During the conference, Su was also elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA Fellow).

Su is a fellow alumnus of the School of Mathematical Sciences at Peking University, together with Hong Wang and Yu Deng, who recently received the Fields Medal, widely regarded as the “Nobel Prize of Mathematics.” All three graduated from Peking University’s School of Mathematical Sciences as members of the Class of 2007 undergraduate cohort.

At the award ceremony, Su expressed his gratitude:

“I have benefited from many people throughout my journey, especially my teachers at Peking University and Stanford University, who generously shared their knowledge and guidance. I am also grateful for the scholarships I received at both universities, which allowed me to focus on my studies.”

Su noted that artificial intelligence will make data increasingly abundant and valuable, further enhancing the importance of statistics. “It is an exciting time to become a statistician,” he said.

About Weijie Su

Weijie Su is an Associate Professor in the Wharton Statistics and Data Science Department and, by courtesy, in the Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Informatics at the University of Pennsylvania. He also serves as Co-Director of the Penn Research in Machine Learning Center.

Su received his Ph.D. in Statistics from Stanford University in 2016 and his bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Peking University in 2011. His research interests include the statistical foundations of generative AI, high-dimensional statistics, privacy-preserving data analysis, and optimization.

He is a founding Co-Editor of the journal Statistical Learning and Data Science and serves as an Associate Editor for several leading academic journals, including the Journal of the American Statistical Association (JASA), Annals of Applied Statistics (AOAS), Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR), Foundations and Trends in Statistics, Harvard Data Science Review, and Operations Research.

Su currently serves on the Organizing Committee of ICML 2026 as Scientific Integrity Chair, where his isotonic mechanism will be deployed to improve the peer-review process.

His research has been recognized with numerous honors, including the Stanford Theodore Anderson Dissertation Award, NSF CAREER Award, Sloan Research Fellowship, IMS Peter Hall Prize, SIAM Early Career Prize in Data Science, ASA Noether Early Career Award, ICBS Frontiers of Science Award in Mathematics, IMS Medallion Lectureship, and the Outstanding Young Talent Award in the 2025 China Annual Review of Mathematics. He has authored two discussion papers in JRSSB and JASA and is a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS).

About the COPSS Presidents’ Award

The Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS) sponsors and presents the COPSS Presidents’ Award annually to recognize a statistician aged 40 or younger who has made outstanding contributions to statistical research.

Established in 1976, the award consists of a commemorative plaque and a cash honorarium of US$2,000. It is presented each year at the Joint Statistical Meetings, one of the world’s largest gatherings of statisticians.

Peking University Mathematics: A Rising Force in Global Mathematics

The recognition of Weijie Su comes shortly after another historic achievement by Peking University mathematics alumni. Recently, Hong Wang and Yu Deng, both members of Peking University’s 2007 undergraduate cohort, were awarded the Fields Medal​, marking the first time that mathematicians of Chinese nationality have received the honor and the first time that two mathematicians with a background in China’s domestic mathematics education system have won the world’s highest honor in mathematics in the same year.

For Wang and Deng, as well as other emerging mathematicians, Peking University has played a pivotal role in their academic development.

Wang entered Peking University in 2007 through the School of Earth and Space Sciences and transferred to the School of Mathematical Sciences one year later due to her passion for mathematics. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Peking University’s School of Mathematical Sciences in 2011.

Deng, also a member of the 2007 undergraduate cohort, entered Peking University through a recommendation after winning a gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiad. He later transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics.

At the 2026 International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM), 14 mathematicians associated with Peking University were invited to deliver 45-minute academic lectures​. They include alumni from different generations as well as faculty members, reflecting the university’s growing influence in global mathematics.

Today, Peking University mathematics has developed a strong new generation of researchers who are making significant contributions across frontier areas of mathematics. Alumni from the university’s “golden generation” have achieved international recognition in fields including algebraic geometry, number theory, arithmetic geometry, p-adic Hodge theory, and mathematical physics.

Among them, Chen-Yang Xu (Class of 1999) has made influential contributions to algebraic geometry; Zhiwei Yun (Class of 2000) has advanced connections between number theory and geometry; Ruochuan Liu (Class of 1999) has made foundational contributions to p-adic Hodge theory and the p-adic Langlands program; Xinyi Yuan (Class of 2000) has achieved major breakthroughs in Arakelov geometry, Diophantine geometry, and arithmetic dynamics; and Yi Liu (Class of 2002) solved longstanding problems including conjectures proposed by Fields Medalist Curtis McMullen.

The 2007 undergraduate cohort has produced a new generation of internationally recognized scholars, including Hong Wang, Yu Deng, Weijie Su, Xin Sun, and Yunqing Tang. Ziquan Zhuang (Class of 2010) became the youngest Peking University mathematician invited to deliver a lecture at the 2026 International Congress of Mathematicians.

Together, these achievements highlight the accelerating development of Peking University mathematics and its growing global impact in science and research.