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Shi Huang

Liu Jun, one of the world’s leading statisticians and a long-time professor at Harvard, has returned to China full-time, accepting a prestigious chair at Tsinghua University last month.
The move marks the homecoming of an academic whose career has spanned research in data science, biostatistics and artificial intelligence – and whose early life reflected the complex interplay between intellectual pursuit and political engagement.
In 1988, Liu Jun transferred from Rutgers University in New Jersey to the University of Chicago, studying under statistician Wing Hung Wong.
While there, he became deeply interested in human rights issues and spent a considerable amount of time taking part in student protests.
The student movement he supported did not occur in Chicago, but in Beijing.
In 1989, students held a massive demonstration in Tiananmen Square and overseas student groups have organised events in support of the cause. Liu was so actively involved in student activities in the United States that his mentor asked him if he wanted to be “a politician or a mathematician?”
This question was a turning point for Liu. After careful consideration, he decided to pursue a career in maths.

In 2001, he stated in an interview with Harvard University’s official media, the Harvard Gazette, about the choices he made in his youth.
“I didn’t want to solve problems just because they hadn’t been solved by others,” Liu said. “I wanted to connect to reality. Although I didn’t know exactly what statistics was, the field appealed to me for that reason.”
On August 30, despite a past background of student activism during his youth, Tsinghua University announced Liu’s full-time appointment.
Qiu Yong, the Communist Party secretary of Tsinghua University, and Li Luming, the president, attended the high-standard appointment ceremony. Vice-president Jiang Peixue hosted the ceremony.
Liu was appointed as the “Tsinghua University Xinghua Distinguished Chair Professor”, which is the institution’s highest title. Before this, only two top overseas-returned scientists had received it.
Liu was born and raised on the Tsinghua University campus. His father was a teacher at the university. Since the age of 12, he had been fascinated by mathematics.
However, growing up in the later years of the Cultural Revolution it was exceptionally difficult to develop such interests. Not to mention computers or calculators – even mathematics books were scarce.

During the 10 years of the Cultural Revolution in China, attending university was prohibited, and any form of study related to it was also discouraged. High school students were sent in large groups to the countryside to participate in agricultural labour.
To encourage his son’s studies, Liu’s father borrowed books from various sources and even hand copied one for him.
Liu did not care what kind of book he received, whether it was high school material or university content; as long as it was a mathematics book, he read it.
“I couldn’t tell high school from college texts, so I read everything,” he recalled in a 2012 interview with Science News Daily. “Doing maths was like a game you could play with only a piece of paper and a pencil. On Sundays, I rode my bike for an hour to meet friends and do problems.”
Liu was accepted by Peking University and after entering campus, he spent much of his time playing bridge and “hanging out”. Nevertheless, upon graduating in 1985, he was one of the top students in the mathematics department.
After graduation, he was awarded a scholarship by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Liu moved to the United States with a group of outstanding Chinese mathematics students.


His American life began at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and language proved to be the highest barrier. But his talent for mathematics transcended language.
“Fortunately, I could get by with understanding formulas and equations,” Liu said. “I got straight As without knowing much of what the teachers were saying,” he admitted to the Harvard Gazette.
In 1988, Liu Jun transferred to the University of Chicago.
After refocusing on mathematics, particularly statistics, he obtained his PhD in 1991 with only three years together – which also included time spent on student human rights activities – and was directly offered an assistant professorship in the department of statistics at Harvard University.
He moved to the west coast, where he served as an assistant professor, associate professor and full professor in the department of statistics at Stanford University. In 2000, he returned to Harvard as a full tenured professor in the department of statistics.
Liu has been engaged in research in the fields of bioinformatics, biostatistics and computational biology, making outstanding contributions that have had a profound impact on big data processing and machine learning.


He received the COPSS Presidents’ Award in 2002, the highest honour in the international statistics community. In 2010, Liu was awarded the Morningside Medal in applied mathematics, which is awarded every three years to individuals under 45.
In 2016, he received the Pao-Lu Hsu Award from the International Chinese Statistical Association, awarded every three years to individuals under 51. Liu became a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2005, and two decades later, in May 2025, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences Fellow.
Since 2005, Liu Jun has served as a visiting professor at Tsinghua University. In 2015, he led the establishment of the Tsinghua University Centre for Statistics and served as its honorary director.
More recently, in July last year, he assumed the role of director of the development Committee, leading the effort to establish the department of statistics and data science and help recruit outstanding overseas faculty members.
Lui’s decision to move back to China seems to have been a long time in the making.
In November 2010, at a Peking University alumni forum in New England, Liu Jun was asked if he had considered returning to China.


He expressed that although his “roots” were in China, where he had ageing parents, and the country’s rapid economic growth made him feel a potential move was right, he had reservations due to his children who lived in the US.
Fifteen years later, influenced by China’s rapidly developing technological capabilities and funding cuts to Harvard University under the Trump administration, he decided to return to Tsinghua.
The Trump administration froze grants to Harvard on April 14. As a result, work was halted on numerous research projects in fields critical both nationally and globally.
“Choosing to return now is driven by a love for education and scientific research, as well as a sense of patriotism,” Liu stated at the Tsinghua welcome ceremony on August 30.
“Statistics and data science are important methods and ways of thinking in transdisciplinary, and they are a crucial foundation for the development of artificial intelligence, possessing vast prospects.”
Tsinghua officially established the department of statistics and data science on July 10. According to an official announcement, this is a crucial step for Tsinghua to refine its academic structure, support the national big data strategy, advance AI initiatives and contribute to the digital China initiative.
The South China Morning Post has contacted Liu for comment.


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Science

Top Harvard mathematician Liu Jun leaves US for China

Liu Jun, one of the world’s leading statisticians and a longtime professor at Harvard University, has returned to China full time, accepting a prestigious chair at Tsinghua University last month. Photo: Handout

First row from left to right: Maths teacher, Shao Guangyan, Liu Jun, and his Chinese teacher, Zhang Ying. Photo: Handout

Liu Jun, one of the world’s leading statisticians and a long-time professor at Harvard University, has returned to China full time, accepting a prestigious chair at Tsinghua University last month. Photo: handout

News

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Patriotism, plus ‘a love for education and science’, amid Trump research cuts, sees leading US statistician Liu Jun return to China


Patriotism, plus ‘a love for education and science’, amid Trump research cuts, sees leading US statistician Liu Jun return to China.


Top Harvard mathematician Liu Jun leaves US for China

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Patriotism, plus ‘a love for education and science’, amid Trump research cuts, sees leading US statistician Liu Jun return to China

Patriotism, plus ‘a love for education and science’, amid Trump research cuts, sees leading US statistician Liu Jun return to China