September 07, 2023
The Department of Financial and Actuarial Mathematics at XJTLU is excited to welcome new staff members Dr Yuhao Li, Dr Ran Wei, and Dr Yuwei Zhao.
Having them on board, the Department is able to improve the teaching quality further, expand the faculty capacity, and provide excellent education for our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.
Dr Yuhao Li
Teaching Fellow
Career
Dr Yuhao Li have a background in economics with a specialisation in econometrics. This field is where statistics and economics intersect and thrive.
He earned his PhD in 2019 from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, south of Madrid, in the neighbourhood of Getafe. After graduation, he worked for three years at Wuhan University as an assistant professor and instructed graduate and undergraduate students in econometrics.
Teaching
Dr Yuhao Li will teach undergraduate courses MTH 206 and MTH 305 this semester.
“Students often put much effort into figuring out the algebra of a model, which is essential in its way. However, the intuitions and assumptions behind the model are essential for a better understanding of it.” Dr Yuhao Li remarks.
Research
Currently, Dr Yuhao Li is focused on two areas: self-exciting processes and reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHS).
The first topic involves exploring the dynamic mechanisms of events in a counting process.
“I have developed an estimation method that can distinguish unobserved individual heterogeneity from state-dependent effects. In the near future, I plan to create procedures for testing the goodness-of-fit of such models.”
RKHS, is a special Hilbert space with useful properties. While it is widely used in machine learning, it needs to be understood and applied in the econometrics community. The focus is on utilizing the properties and techniques of RKHS to test the adequacy of econometric models, such as conditional moment restriction models, conditional distribution models, and quantile models.
Wishes
“XJTLU has a reputation as a truly global and international university. As a scholar, I look forward to starting my teaching and research exploration journey here.”
“Also, Suzhou is a friendly city with efficient government organisations and facilities. It boasts a rich history and holds a special place in the hearts of many Chinese people.”
Dr Ran Wei
Assistant Professor
Career
Dr. Ran Wei received his PhD in Mathematics from the National University of Singapore in 2017. After graduation, he worked for two years in industry before beginning a postdoctoral position at Université Paris-Est Créteil. He formerly worked in the Department of Mathematics at Nanjing University as an Assistant Research Fellow before joining Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University.
Teaching
The course Dr Ran Wei will teach is MTH303 (Linear Statistical Models). The course is about linear regression models and their generalization.
Research
Dr Ran Wei’s research interests mainly lie in probability theory and statistical mechanics models. Currently, he is also exploring deep learning methods in solving mathematical finance problems.
Wishes
“I hope that I can have more cooperation opportunities in XJTLU, build connections to scholars crossing different research fields and different countries, proceed my current research, and explore new research fields.” Dr Ran Wei says.
Dr Yuwei Zhao
Senior Teaching Fellow
Career
Dr Yuwei Zhao received his PhD from the University of Copenhagen under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Thomas Mikosch. His post-doctoral work at the Universities of Louvain and Ulm served as the beginning of his research career.
Before joining the Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, he worked as Young Investigator at the Shanghai Center for Mathematical Sciences for about 6 years.
Teaching
This semester, Dr Yuwei Zhao will instruct the undergraduate course MTH 205.
The course focuses on the basics of statistics, especially hypothesis testing. The hypothesis testing is a technique to tell whether a stochastic object has the “random” property we expect.
Research
Dr Yuwei Zhao's primary research interest lies in the field of extreme value theory, time series analysis and Fourier analysis. To be more precise, he is interested in the applications of Fourier-type transforms of a heavy-tailed time series, which is closely related to topics or problems in the field of risk management.
Recently, the study of functional time series has also become his focus in the research.
Wishes
He said that XJTLU is a highly internationalised and diverse university. The students and colleagues at XJTLU brought back fond memories of his study and work in Europe, and he believes that the academic atmosphere and resources here will contribute to his further development of research and teaching.
Edited by Qinru Liu
Photos provided by Dr Yuhao Li, Dr Ran Wei, and Dr Yuwei Zhao
September 07, 2023