Reflections on the IDEA Forum—Statistics, Climate Change, and Sustainability

Abstract The past two decades have witnessed a great change in the statistics community, as we have become more inclusive and appreciative of different types and areas of research. Interdisciplinary research, including statistical climatology, has developed rapidly in such a background. The Institute for Mathematical and Statistical Innovation (IMSI), funded by the National Science Foundation, is managed by the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, the University of Illinois Chicago, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and is hosted at the University of Chicago. IMSI launched in fall 2020 with a mission “to apply rigorous mathematics and statistics to urgent scientific and societal problems, and to spur transformational change in the mathematical sciences.” This article describes the work of IMSI and gives our perspective on the future of the field of statistical climatology.