孟晓犁1963年出生于上海，并于1978年考入复旦大学数学系。1982年本科毕业后，孟晓犁于1984-1986年继续在复旦大学数学研究所概率统计研究生班学习。毕业后，他前往美国求学，并于1990年获得哈佛大学统计学博士学位。此后，他先后在芝加哥大学和哈佛大学统计系任教。2004年，孟晓犁出任哈佛大学统计系主任，成为哈佛大学首位出任系主任的、来自中国大陆的学者。

多年来，孟晓犁的学术能力和领导能力得到了哈佛大学和国际学术界的一致认可。在哈佛大学刊登的新闻稿中，校方对孟晓犁担任统计系主任取得的成绩给予了高度评价。稿件认为，孟晓犁促进并见证了哈佛统计系“神奇的发展壮大(dramatic expansion)”。过去8年中，哈佛统计系的本科主修学生从个位数增长到了超过70人，统计系开设的本科生核心课程的人气激增。

在学术上，孟晓犁已经成为鼓励跨学科研究的领导者。他带哈佛的同事已经突破了统计学的传统研究范围，把统计学应用于从基因研究到宇航学的广泛领域内。甚至在语言学、历史学等领域的统计与数据分析研究中，他们也有所建树。哈佛校方认为，在孟晓犁的领导下，统计学系已经是哈佛大学最具跨学科特点的系科之一。

哈佛大学校长福斯特评价认为，孟晓犁是一个“真正的创新者”，作为一个日益关键的研究领域的领导者，他投入了巨大的热情和精力。福斯特表示，她相信，孟晓犁将为哈佛研究生院做出杰出贡献，并带领学生取得优异成绩。

孟晓犁多次返回母校复旦大学，并为在复旦与哈佛之前加强学术交流与全面合作做出了巨大的努力，发挥了桥梁的作用。在他的直接参与和努力下，2009年起，每年哈佛大学都会在复旦举办“复旦-哈佛暑期学校”。数十位哈佛大学学生，每年将在复旦与复旦的师生一起，度过共同学习、研究的难忘经历。

孟晓犁曾在公开场合对复旦的学弟学妹们表示，“复旦是我事业起步的地方”，在他看来，复旦永远是自己的人生之根和心灵家园。(据复旦大学官方网站)

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哈佛大学官网消息英文原文

Xiao-Li Meng, Ph.D. ’90, the Whipple V.N. Jones Professor of Statistics and chair of the Department of Statistics, has been named dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) at Harvard University, effective Aug. 15.

Meng succeeds Allan M. Brandt, the Amalie Moses Kass Professor of the History of Medicine and professor of the history of science, as permanent dean. Brandt stepped down in February to begin treatment for an illness. Richard J. Tarrant, Pope Professor of the Latin Language and Literature, served as interim dean of GSAS following Brandt’s departure.

As Statistics Department chair since 2004, Meng has overseen a dramatic expansion of the department, as the number of undergraduate concentrators has grown from a single digit to more than 70, and the department’s core undergraduate courses have surged in popularity. He also has worked closely with alumni and alumnae to raise funds to establish the first endowed biennial distinguished teaching lecture series, junior faculty/teaching fellow awards (David Pickard Memorial Fund), and graduate student research awards (Art Dempster Fund) in statistics.

Meng has been a leader in encouraging connections between disciplines at a time when the importance of statistical analysis has been broadly recognized, and as breakthroughs in fields ranging from genetics to astronomy have demanded more-sophisticated data crunching. He and his colleagues have conducted projects with faculty and students in biology, medicine, chemistry, engineering, economic and health policy — and even history and language, making statistics one of Harvard’s most interdisciplinary departments.

“I am delighted to welcome Xiao-Li Meng as the new dean of the Graduate School,” said Michael D. Smith, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS). “His passion for teaching and learning, his interdisciplinary application of the tools of statistical analysis to topics as varied as climate change, medicine, and astrophysics, and his innovative, entrepreneurial approach as a scholar and an educator — all of this gives him a uniquely creative vision for what graduate education ought to accomplish today and in the future. I expect that he will lead our graduate programs with the same dynamic curiosity that defined his tenure as Statistics chair, and that he’ll continue building on the excellent work of his predecessors, particularly Allan Brandt.”

“In his scholarship, his pedagogy, and his mentorship of graduate students and undergraduates alike, Xiao-Li Meng is a true innovator,” said President Drew Faust. “He has brought a remarkable energy and enthusiasm to his role as a leader in an increasingly critical field, one that helps shape new knowledge across Harvard’s diverse intellectual landscape. He will make an outstanding steward for our Graduate School and advocate for its students.”

“Harvard has been a dream school for generations of students around the world. GSAS made my dream come true by providing me with full financial support when I was literally a village boy on the other side of the globe,” said Meng. “I am therefore deeply grateful to Dean Smith for providing me with this tremendous opportunity to work directly with him and the many other Harvard leaders, especially President Faust and Provost [Alan] Garber, and with our incomparable faculty, dedicated staff, exceptional students, and accomplished alumni to continue and enhance the Harvard legacy, including making the possibility of the Harvard dream realizable by many diverse students from every corner of the globe.”

“I also look forward to continuing Allan Brandt’s legacy, of which I am a direct beneficiary,” said Meng, who recently returned to campus after co-teaching a study-abroad course in Shanghai this summer.

“Like Allan, Xiao-Li recognizes and celebrates the ways in which graduate and undergraduate education work in tandem, with graduate students and undergraduates directly benefiting each other,” Smith said. “This is best exemplified in the Gen Ed course he developed with his graduate students.”

The course Meng just co-taught in Shanghai was a summer-school variation of the Gen Ed course EMR 16, “Real-Life Statistics: Your Chance for Happiness (or Misery),” a course designed by him and a dozen graduate students (known as the “happy team”), partially via the Graduate Seminars in General Education program that Brandt established. The pioneering project of directly involving graduate students in designing undergraduate courses, and hence providing them with hands-on pedagogical training — together with Meng’s other innovations such as a yearlong required course on teaching and communication skills for all first-year Ph.D. students (STAT 303, “The Art and Practice of Teaching Statistics”) — contributed substantially to his department’s winning, in 2008, a $25,000 GSAS Dean’s Prize for Innovations in Graduate Education at Harvard.

Meng is one of Harvard’s leading voices on pedagogical innovation, working to make the Department of Statistics a laboratory for educational experiments whose common theme involves the vital connections and mutually rewarding pathways between research and teaching. Ph.D. students in statistics have been among the winners of the Derek C. Bok Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching in each year since the award was created in 2007.

As part of his efforts to promote exceptional teaching and learning on campus, Meng has also served on the FAS Committee on Pedagogical Improvement (2004-10) and the FAS Task Force on Teaching and Career Development (2006-07). He is a recipient of numerous research and teaching awards, including the 2001 COPSS (Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies) Award for being “the outstanding statistician under the age of forty” and the 1997-1998 University of Chicago Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching.

Born in Shanghai, Meng received a B.S. in mathematics (1982) and a diploma in graduate study of mathematical statistics (1986), both from Fudan University in Shanghai. He received his Ph.D. in statistics from Harvard in 1990. From 1991 to 2001, when he came to Harvard, Meng was assistant, associate, and then full professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Chicago. He remains affiliated with the University of Chicago as a faculty member of its Center for Health Statistics.