Miroslav Ristic is a professor in the Faculty of Sciences and Mathematics at the University of Nis, Serbia, specialising in time series analysis and statistical distribution theory. He has served as an Associate Editor of Statistica Neerlandica since October 2018 and earlier this year was appointed joint Editor of the journal.
In honour of his appointment, Statistics Views spoke to Miroslav about his career, his work as an editor, and the future of statistics.
Can you tell us a bit about your education and career so far?
I started to work in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Nis, Serbia as mathematical statistician in 1996. In 2002, I defended my PhD thesis in mathematical statistics at the University of Nis, Faculty of Sciences and Mathematics by studying stationary autoregressive time series models with given marginal distributions. In the last ten years, I have been working on the development of statistical distributions and stationary and non-stationary count time series models. Since 2012, I have been teaching as a full professor in the Faculty of Sciences and Mathematics at the University of Nis. Between 2011 and 2016, I was a supervisor to five PhD students who worked and defended their theses on development of different types of continuous and discrete autoregressive time series models. Since late 2016, I have been engaged as an Associate Editor for the journals Statistical Papers and the Communications in Statistics series. Recently, I have become an Associate Editor for the Journal of Applied Statistics.
What areas of statistics do you work in, and why do you think this work is important?
I work in two areas of statistics, time series analysis and statistical distribution theory. Its importance lies in the fact that many occurrences in nature can be described and investigated by statistical models based on independent or dependent components. Many of the introduced and studied models have been obtained from real problems in many areas such as crime and medicine, among others, and have shown as the best solutions for now.
What interested you about becoming an editor?
Being an editor is not only a great honour, but also an opportunity for me to contribute to the development and quality of the journal. In the last three years, I have been worked as an Associate Editor for many statistical journals and have learned a lot. Thus, as an editor I get the opportunity to apply these gained experiences in the favour of the journal.
What would you like to achieve while serving as Editor of Statistica Neerlandica?
As Editor of Statistica Neerlandica and in cooperation with other two Editors, I would like to continue working on the improvement of the quality and the reputation of the journal, increase the number of new readers, attract quality papers as much as possible, and raise the impact factor of the journal.
Do you have any ideas for special issues of the journal?
I think that special issues of the journal can be of great interest to existing readers of Statistica Neerlandica and can significantly attract new readers. One of the area of statistics which is rapidly developed is the analysis of time series of counts. Thus, I would like to consider a special issue devoted to this area of research and introduce readers with this very interesting and important area of statistics. Also, some other interesting areas are planned to be covered by special issues of Statistica Neerlandica in the near future.
Are there any areas of statistics that you think could be particularly exciting in the near future?
My opinion is that any area of statistics might be of great importance for further research in many fields. Special attention will be devoted to statistical and machine learning theory, statistical genetics, and time series analysis, through their potential for application. Mathematical statistics will still be an important area of statistics for the development of new areas of research.
Copyright: Image appears courtesy of Miroslav Ristic