Rate My Professor Shelton Peiris

Professor Shelton Peiris is Professor of Statistics and Financial Econometrics in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sydney. He earned his PhD in Mathematical Statistics from Monash University, Melbourne, in 1987. After graduation, he lectured at the University of Moratuwa and the University of Melbourne before joining the Department of Statistics at the University of Sydney in 1990, where he has remained a faculty member. He has held extensive visiting appointments as Professor of Statistics or Economics at numerous institutions, including University of Waterloo (1993), University of Manitoba (1997), University of Iowa (1997), Thaksin University (1998), Pennsylvania State University (2002), University of Malaya (2007, 2013/2014), Soka University Tokyo (2015), Higher School of Economics Moscow (2015), University of Ioannina (2018), Plekhanov University Moscow (2018), Simon Fraser University (2019), University of Gadjah Mada Indonesia (2020), University of Roma Tor Vergata Italy (2022), and University of California, Davis (Fall 2024).

Peiris's research specializations encompass statistical analysis of stationary and non-stationary time series data, theory and applications of estimating functions, financial time series modelling, and saddlepoint and Edgeworth type approximations for time series problems, alongside interests in technology's role in statistics education. He co-authored textbooks 'A Quick Reference Guide to Statistics and Data Science Using RStudio' (2021, with Jennifer Chan and Nethal Jajo) and 'Python and R in Statistics and Data Science' (2023, with Nethal Jajo), with publications in journals such as Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Time Series Analysis, Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Stochastic Processes and Applications, and Computational Statistics and Data Analysis. He received an ARC Linkage grant of A$295,000 (2004-2007) for modelling stock market liquidity and an ARC bridging grant for ACD modelling. Honors include Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society (FRSS), Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Applied Statistics, Sri Lanka (FIASSL, 2017), Faculty of Science Citation for Excellence in Teaching (2012), World Class Professor at University of Gadjah Mada (2020), and Honorary Professor of Statistics (2024). Peiris served as Director of the Statistics Teaching Program until 2015, holds editorial roles such as Associate Editor for Advances in Decision Sciences and Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, and has given keynote addresses at conferences including the 8th SEAMS-UGM 2019 and International Statistics Conference 2017.