Duke statistical science professor Sayan Mukherjee dies unexpectedly at 54

Sayan Mukherjee, research professor of statistical science and mathematics and professor of biostatistics and bioinformatics, died unexpectedly Monday at age 54 in Leipzig, Germany.

“Sayan was a brilliant scientist who cared deeply about science, our human condition and individual people. He was a dedicated mentor who regularly went above and beyond,” said Jonathan Mattingly, Kimberly J. Jenkins distinguished university professor of new technologies and professor of statistical science and mathematics. “… He will be deeply missed.”

Mukherjee joined Duke as a professor in 2004, where he worked on developing new statistical and computational tools to analyze complex, high-dimensional data across fields, including mathematics, computer science, biology and medicine. He was particularly interested in understanding data with unusual or intricate structures, including shapes and surfaces.

In 2022, Mukherjee moved to Leipzig University in Germany, where he worked as the Alexander von Humboldt professor for artificial intelligence while maintaining his affiliation with Duke. In the role, he also served as a fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, investigating new approaches to using biological data to enhance precision medicine.

During his time in Germany, Mukherjee “achieved exceptional things” and “significantly enhanced the research profile of [the] institute,” said László Székelyhidi, managing director of the Max Planck Institute.

At Duke, Mukherjee is remembered by Hongkai Zhao, Ruth F. DeVarney distinguished professor of mathematics and chair of the mathematics department, as an “outstanding scholar” who served as “an important link between mathematics and statistics.”

Those who knew Mukherjee spoke of his kindness, warmth and sense of humor, recalling how he supported his colleagues during hard times and enjoyed sharing his breadth of knowledge of “just about everything,” from statistics to history to music.

Mukherjee was born in Kolkata, India, and spent part of his childhood in France and Canada before moving to the United States. He completed his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at Princeton University in 1992, his master’s degree in applied physics and mathematics at Columbia University in 1996 and his doctoral degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001. In 2018, he became a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.