The School of Mathematics and Statistics of Yunnan University was established in December 2005. The mathematics department, its predecessor, was founded in 1934. The Department of Statistics was founded in 1989. It is one of the long-standing mathematics and statistics departments of Chinese universities. Many famous mathematicians, such as Xiong Qinglai, He Lu, Hua Luogeng, Chen Xingshen, He Yanxuan, Wang Shikui, and Zhuang Yintai, have taught at the Mathematics Department of Yunnan University. They have all made outstanding contributions in the construction and development of mathematics in Yunnan University.

Over the years, with the support of the university, with the joint efforts of all the teachers and students, the school has now developed into a research and teaching and society serving school. The school now has two first-level doctoral degree programs in mathematics and statistics, two first-level master's degree programs in mathematics and statistics, two post-doctoral research stations in mathematics and statistics, a master's degree program in quantitative economics, and programs of Master of Applied statistics and Master of Bigdata. Our school now has formed a complete talent-training system for undergraduates-master-PhD and post-doctoral. Among them, probability theory and mathematical statistics, and basic mathematics are provincial key disciplines.

The school has four undergraduate majors in mathematics and applied mathematics, information and computational science, statistics, data science and big data technology, and national science talent training base--“mathematical and physical based”, “Xu Zongben Academician Workstation”, and “Yunnan institution of Higher learning Postgraduate Education and Innovation Joint Training Base”, “Central and Local Joint Construction of University's Characteristic Advantage Laboratory (Yunnan University Statistical Modeling and Data Integration Laboratory)”, “Yunnan Key Laboratory of Statistical Modeling and Data Analysis”, “Key Laboratory of Statistics and Information Technology of Yunnan Colleges and Universities”, “Innovative Team of Research on Complex Data Statistics and Inference Methods of Yunnan University”, “Computing Theory and Applied Technology Innovation Team of Yunnan Colleges and Universities”, “Information and Computing Science Professional Teaching Team of Yunnan Colleges and Universities ”, 1 provincial-level quality course, 2 provincial bilingual teaching demonstration courses, and 1 national bilingual teaching demonstration course.

After several generations of efforts, the School of Mathematics and Statistics has formed five obvious advantages, characteristics and stable research directions of modern analysis, algebra, differential equations, combination optimization and algorithm theory and mathematical statistics. We now formed a teaching team with reasonable title, age, academic qualifications, professional structure, and obvious advantage, its core members are young and middle-aged teachers. There are 66 full-time faculty members (59 teachers), including 13 professors, 26 associate professors, 20 lecturers. Among them, there are 47 teachers with doctoral degrees, 2 part-time academicians, and 8 part-time professors. Also, we have 1 academician (specially hired), 2 distinguished professors of the “Changjiang Scholars Award Program”, 2 lecture professors of the “Changjiang Scholars Award Program”, 1 winner of the “National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars”, 1 expert of “National Thousand Plan”, 1 person of the “Million and Ten Million Talent Projects” of Ministry of Human Resources and Social Sciences, one expert with outstanding contributions at the national level, one member of the Academic Leadership Group of the Mathematics Tianyuan Fund of the National Natural Science Foundation, one member of the Teaching Guidance Committee of the Statistics Department of the Ministry of Education, one person of the Ministry of Education's “New Century Excellent Talents Support Program”, one recommended member of the International Statistical Institute, one “Board of Directors” of the International Pan-Statistics Association, one winner of the “Fok Ying-Tong Young Teacher Award”, 1 person of the “Yunnan Science and Technology Leaders”, 3 persons of “provincial sudden” or “provincial stickers”, 2 persons of “Yunnan high-level imported talents”, 3 persons of “Yunnan 100 people plan”, 9 Young distinguished persons of “Yunnan 10,000 people plan”, 3 contacted experts of Yunnan provincial party committee, 4 persons of “Yunnan young and middle-aged academic and technical leaders” , 2 reserve talents of “Yunnan young and middle-aged academic and technical leaders”, and 3 “Yunnan Distinguished Teachers”. It has formed a faculty team led by high-level talents such as academicians, Changjiang Scholars, Distinguished Young Scholars, experts of “National Thousand Plan”, and Yunnan high-level scientific and technological talents. It has laid a solid foundation in order to effectively improve the level of teaching and research, enhance core competitiveness, and promote “Double Top - class” Construction.

In the past five years, the research work of the school has achieved fruitful results and has obtained a number of research results that have great influence at home and abroad, including 8 monographs and nearly 800 research papers; and undertaken 34 national projects, such as the National Outstanding Youth Science Fund, the key projects of National Natural Science Foundation, the general, youth and special projects of National Natural Science Foundation, National Social Science Fund, and more than 10 horizontal projects for Yunnan Provincial Bureau of Statistics, Kunming Municipal Bureau of Statistics, and China Railway Second Institute. We also won 2 second prizes and 2 third prizes at the provincial and ministerial level.

At present, there are 716 undergraduates, 266 graduate students, and 57 doctoral students in the school. The school attaches great importance to the cultivation of students, actively encourages teachers to carry out teaching reforms and teaching seminars, actively seeks ways to improve the teaching and research environment, actively organizes and guides students to participate in in-class and out-of-class scientific and technological innovation activities, and strives to cultivate students’ awareness, ability, and teamwork spirit of science and technology innovation, cultivate students’ practical application ability through multiple channels. In recent years, we have won numerous awards in the National College Students’ Mathematical Modeling, American College Students’ Mathematical Modeling, the “Challenge Cup” College Students’ Science and Technology Competition, and the College Students’ Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition. The school has trained a large number of potential mathematics and statisticians for the society, and some have become well-known scholars, professors or doctoral advisors as well as leaders or experts at all levels.