The progress of technologies (connecting objects, monitoring devices, sensors, remote sensing, neuroimaging, etc) allow to collect data containing some continuum. The continuum may concerns the time or space but not only. In some situations the continuum may come from multiple sources. Consequently, a statistical unit may be a curve, a surface or any more complex mathematical object presenting some continuum feature. Such hi-tech data are called functional data, where the word "functional" is the natural mathematical concept for handling continuum. The challenge is simple: extracting relevant information from datasets containing collections of curves, or surfaces or any other complex objects, often combined with standard multivariate variables. All methodologies dealing with such functional data are gathered under the terminology Functional Data Analysis (FDA). The success of this exciting modern area of Statistics is mainly due to its ability to solve major engineering challenges coming from modern domains of applications (biology, biomechanics, chemometrics, econometrics, environmental management, geophysics, medical sciences, industry, etc) while raising new fundamental statistical issues. Five outstanding experts of the Functional Data Analysis community will present the high potentialities of statistical methodologies involving Functional Data Analysis with a special attention on practical developments. The main goal of this session is to reach a wide audience by presenting a set of interesting applications demonstrating the usefulness of functional data analysis.

Organiser: Prof. Frederic Ferraty 

Chair: Prof. Frederic Ferraty 

Speaker: Dr David Nerini 

Speaker: Prof. Frederic Ferraty 

Speaker: Steve Marron