50 Years of Statistics at TU Dortmund University

The creation of the Department of Statistics over 50 years ago was actually a historical coincidence: The professor of economics Frank E. Münnich joined the Division of Spatial Planning of the newly founded University of Dortmund in 1968 and had previously seen that most universities in the United States ran their own Department of Statistics. The young university was open to this idea and founded its own Division of Statistics on 2 February 1973, which became the Department we know today. In a speech at the gala, one of the first university lecturers in statistics, the now 87-year-old Prof. Em. Siegfried Schach, shared his memories of the Department’s beginnings, when computers were still mainframes fed with punch cards, and data analysis was a painstaking ordeal.

Since almost every scientific discipline uses statistical methods, the Department of Statistics has had an interdisciplinary network in both research and teaching since its inception. In 1992, the Statistical Consulting and Analysis division was founded as a point of contact for all disciplines. The Department made a contribution to the German research landscape in particular with large-scale projects on statistical fundamentals in a variety of disciplines – for example, from 2004 to 2013, with the research projects in the DFG Research Training Group “Statistical Modeling”. In the Collaborative Research Center 823 on “Statistical Modelling of Nonlinear Dynamic Processes” of the German Research Foundation (DFG), statisticians collaborated closely with researchers from the Departments of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Mathematics and Business and Economics between 2009 and 2021. Since 2021, young scientists in the DFG Research Training Group 2624 have been researching “Biostatistical Methods for High-Dimensional Data in Toxicology”.

In spring 2023, statistics joined forces with mathematics and computer science in the interdisciplinary research center “TU Dortmund – Center for Data Science and Simulation” in an effort to consolidate and expand their respective strengths in the field of data science and simulation. The Dortmund statisticians also contribute their expertise to research into artificial intelligence: Alongside scientists from the Department of Computer Science, they conduct cutting-edge research in the Research Center “Trustworthy Data Science and Security” of the University Alliance Ruhr and in the Lamarr Institute for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.

The Department of Statistics also promotes collaborative efforts within the University Alliance Ruhr when it comes to teaching: The joint English-language master's degree program “Econometrics” brings together the fields of economics, mathematics and statistics. Around 1,500 students were enrolled in the statistics and data science degree programs in the Department of Statistics of TU Dortmund University for the 2022/23 winter semester. They were all able to choose their minor subject from the entire range of subjects offered at the university and even solve practical problems in economics, technology or medicine using statistical and data science methods during their studies.

Picture gallery with highlights:

Back