USI professor appointed in the Swiss Statistical Society

Prof. Antonietta Mira was appointed Committee member of the Swiss Statistical Society, the organization that since 1988 represents the interest of professionals working in this field in relation to practice, research and education and contributes to the recognition of statistics as a scientific discipline in its own right.

USI has always been geared towards quantitative disciplines, while maintaining a balance between life, computational, and data sciences. "This recognition is significant for our University, especially at this time when data, transformed by the wise work of statisticians and econometricians into information, can help us clarify and increase our knowledge on how to manage the pandemic", comments Prof. Mira. "But data cannot be separated from a look at the individual, public health, biomedical sciences and economics, together with the ability to communicate them in an adequate and understandable way: we have within our University the interdisciplinary skills that allow us a holistic approach to this global crisis. Cultivating the positive contamination of knowledge means, in my opinion, getting out of one's "comfort zone" and venturing into fascinating lands because they are less familiar. And when you can do this constructively and consciously, people, including researchers, give their best".

Antonietta Mira is very active in the field of scientific dissemination, especially on issues related to probability, statistics, uncertainty and risk. For example, she is the scientific director of the exhibition "Diamo in numeri!" (Numbed by numbers!), which has recently reopened at the Cantonal School of Commerce in Bellinzona after a long forced break (>> www.usi.ch/en/feeds/14521). Furthermore, during the lockdown, in spring 2020, Prof. Mira was interviewed by Teleticino to explain a few issues on the quality of data related to the pandemic of the novel coronavirus >> www.usi.ch/en/feeds/13517

Professor Mira's appointment comes at the same time as the publication of the book "La pandemia dei dati. Ecco il vaccino" (The Data Pandemic. Here's the vaccine., ed. Mondadori), which deals with the topic of data in the age of coronavirus. Written together with Armando Massarenti, editor-in-chief of the Italian daily Il Sole 24 Ore, the book (available from mid-November) uses a practical approach to address the issue of the "pandemic" of data that surrounds us, showing, according to Giorgio Parisi, president of the Italian National Academy of Lincei, "how to use mathematical tools to reach virtually certain conclusions in a world dominated by uncertainty."

Antonietta Mira is Professor of Statistics at the USI Faculty of Economics and Director of the Data Science Lab at the Institute of Computational Science (ICS). She is a member, among other mandates, of the Federal Statistics Committee (>> www.usi.ch/en/feeds/12565).