Stanley Wasserman, President
Phipps Arabie, President-Elect
Jennifer Pittman, Editor
Hi all:
This is my last report to you as Pres of CSNA ... Phipps Arabie takes over for his two-year term beginning the first of the year.
The only business item on the agenda is the election...... The Nominations Committee has finished its business, and voting for 2004 is underway. My thanks to the committee, and good luck to all the candidates. Regardless of who wins, 2004's Board of Directors and the new officers will be great.
Here are some of my wishes for CSNA's future ...
- 1. I would still like to see more frequent CSNA newsletters.
- 2. I would like to see the Journal of Classification Committee finish their business, and
figure out who will be publishing JofC into the future.- 3. I would like to see CSNA move to a web-voting system.
- 4. I want to see the entire CSNA membership at IFCS04, Chicago, July 2004!
Special thanks go to Stan Sclove, Secretary/Treasurer par excellance of CSNA, who makes the presidency of CSNA particularly easy. He was of immense help the past two years.
Thanks again to Buck McMorris and David Banks, and everyone else involved in the planning and staging of IFCS04. It will be a great meeting.
Good luck, Phipps! You will have a wonderful Board and great membership to help you.
My best to you all,
CSNA 2003 The annual meeting took place in mid-June in the DoubleTree Hotel in Tallahassee, Florida, hosted by Professor Mike Brusco of Florida State University. Look elsewhere in this newsletter for a fuller report.
CSNA 2004 The 2004 meeting will be combined with that of the International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS). The Chicago arrangements committee is headed by Professor Buck McMorris, Dean of Science & Letter at Illinois Institute of Tecnology (I.I.T.). The program committee is headed by Professor David Banks, Institute of Statistics and Decision Sciences, Duke University. The meeting is slated for Thursday to Sunday, 15 to 18 July, 2004, preceded by short courses on Wednesday, 14 July. The theme is "Classification, Clustering, and New Data Problems." Please look elsewhere in this newsletter and in the IFCS Newsletter for more details.
CSNA 2005 The 2005 meeting will be joint with that of the Interface Foundation (interface between computing and statistics). It will be hosted by Professor William Shannon of the Washington University Medical School, St. Louis. The tentative date is for the third week in June, 2005, at the Chase-Park Plaza Hotel. Please look elsewhere in this newsletter for further details.
The CSNA nominating committee this year consisted of Phipps Arabie (chair), Mike Brusco, Chris Fraley, Lawrence Hubert and Stan Sclove. The following slate has emerged through the nomination process (action of the committee, and nomination from the floor).
For President-Elect:
- Melvin F. Janowitz,
Associate Director, DIMACS, Rutgers University- F. R. "Buck" McMorris,
Dean, College of Science and Letters; Prof. of Applied Mathematics;
Prof. of Computer Science, Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT)
For two positions on the Board of Directors:
- Michael Brusco,
Marketing, Florida State University- David I. Holmes,
Mathematics and Statistics, The College of New Jersey- Victoria G. Laidler,
Senior Software Engineer, Computer Sciences Corp. at the
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore- William D. Shannon,
Biostatistics, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis
Ballots will be sent to eligible voters (regular and student members) at about the middle of November.
A membership renewal form is included in this newsletter (and will be sent in December). Please remember to pay your dues for the year 2004 on time, to insure that you receive the Journal on a timely basis. Encourage your colleagues and students to join CSNA! Student dues have been greatly reduced! We have an exceptional set of meetings lined up!
The CSNA membership form is available in pdf format by clicking here.
The annual meeting of the Classification Society of North America (CSNA 2003) was held at the Doubletree Hotel in Tallahassee, June 12-15, 2003. This year's meeting overlapped with a multidimensional scaling workshop (June 11-12), which was sponsored by the Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS) group at Rutgers University. I am especially grateful to Mel Janowitz and Doug Carroll for their assistance in planning and organizing the workshop, as well as a number of individuals who presented their research at both the DIMACS workshop and the CSNA meeting.
The CSNA meeting began on Thursday, June 12, with a morning short course on the analysis of microarray data, which was presented by Bill Shannon. Bill also organized an invited session, "Modern Problems for Cluster Analysis," which was scheduled on Saturday afternoon. The Thursday afternoon short course, which was offered by Bernie Harris, focused on combinatorial methods for verifying cluster analyses. Florida State University graduate students from biology, math, and neuroscience comprised a substantial proportion of the attendance for the two short courses, and I thank Bernie for his helpful suggestions that made this possible. Thursday's activities concluded with the evening reception for meeting attendees.
The regular sessions of the conference began on Friday, June 13, with an invited address from Larry Hubert. His presentation, which focused on MATLAB implementations for fitting tree structures to proximity matrices, served as the linchpin between the DIMACS workshop and the CSNA meeting. I am also especially grateful to Larry for providing the display projector, which was used throughout the CSNA conference. Larry's presentation was followed by an invited address from Ian Mckeague, which focused on the analysis of Shakespeare's signature. Friday's activities concluded with the CSNA banquet dinner. The conference resumed on Saturday morning with a full day of sessions, and again on Sunday with a half-day of sessions.
Many members of the CSNA are busy with the prepartations for the 2004 meeting in Chicago. The invited sessions and special invited speakers have been finalized, and the shortcourses are nearly complete. The information on lodging has been posted, and we intend to have on-line registration forms available on January 1, 2004. We continue to work on the social programs; it will be hard to meet the high standards set by the hosts of previous IFCS meetings, but we plan a cruise, a skyscraper reception, and a whiskey-tasting party. More detail on these and related matters is on the conference website at http://www.classification-society.org/ifcs04/.
The editorial process for the refereed proceedings of the meeting is moving ahead quickly, thanks in large part to the efforts of Leanna House, who is organizing that work. I hope that all CSNA members wil help her to meet our tight publication schedule by refereeing any papers they receive quickly and carefully. We need to have camera-ready copy for Springer-Verlag by the last week of February.
It is now less than 12 months to go before IBC 2004 (the XXIInd International Biometric Conference) and ASC 2004 (the 2004 Australian Statistical Conference) will be held in parallel in Cairns, Australia, from 11th to 16th July 2004. Registration is now open and abstracts for contributed sessions can be submitted. Details of accommodation and social events are also available on the web-site (http://www.ozaccom.com.au/cairns2004/).
The Program Committees for IBC 2004 and ASC 2004 have finalized their Invited Sessions which cover a wide range of topics in all areas of biometry and statistics. Lists of these sessions have been posted on the conference web-site and further details will be posted as they become available. [submitted by K. Basford (http://www.uq.edu.au/~agkbasfo) 10/07/03]The next Joint Statistical Meetings are scheduled for 8th to 12th August 2004 in Toronto, Canada. Online abstract submission will be available beginning December 1, 2003. We already have CSNA members who have agreed to organize and/or chair invited sessions. Michael Cohen, Assistant Director for Survey Programs at the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, is organizing and will chair an invited session entitled "Early Warnings of Bioterrorism: Syndromic Surveillance". Other CSNA members are encouraged to participate in the meetings! The website for JSM 2004 is located at (http://www.amstat.org/meetings/jsm/2004/).
[submitted by M. Cohen (mcohen@cpcug.org) 10/08/03]A book on axiomatic consensus theory, by CSNA members Bill Day and Buck McMorris, has just been published by SIAM. If you wish to know more about the book, please click on the web address http://ec-securehost.com/SIAM/FR29.html or send Bill a message.
[submitted by W. Day (whday@istar.ca) 12/08/03]NIMH funded training in quantitative methods for behavioral and social science. Appointment commences July or August 2004. Seminars on advanced topics including multivariate analysis, multidimensional scaling, decision theory, social choice modeling, combinatorial methods for data analysis, and social network analysis. Opportunities for both methodological and applications research. Faculty includes: C. Anderson, D. Budescu, J. Douglas, L. Hubert, L. Jones, A. Klein, R. McDonald, J. Meulman, G. Miller, M. Regenwetter, B. Roberts, J. Spencer-Smith and S. Wasserman. Stipend range: $34,200 to $40,920. Applicants should be US citizens or have been admitted for permanent residence. Funding limits appointments to individuals who are no more than two years post-PhD. Curriculum Vitae, statement of research interests, reprints, and three letters of recommendation should be sent to:
Stanley Wasserman, Coordinator, NIMH Training Program in Quantitative
Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, 603 E.
Daniel, Champaign, Illinois 61820.
e-mail: stanwass@uiuc.edu
Deadline is February 28, 2004
. [submitted by S. Sclove (slsclove@uic.edu) 11/12/03]The Section on Statistical Genetics in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham is accepting applications from statistical and other scientists for postdoctoral positions in Statistical Genetics, Genetic Epidemiology and/or Microarray Analysis. Several appointments are anticipated. Starting dates are open and flexible. Appointments will be for two years, with possible extension for another year. Salary is commensurate with qualifications but in all cases equals or exceeds NIH post-doctoral stipends.
The training program is designed for post-doctoral trainees with doctoral degrees and some prior training or expertise in the statistical, mathematical, computational, or biological sciences who seek training at the interface between statistical and molecular genetics.
Criteria for selection include demonstrated research ability in statistics or a relevant scientific discipline, interest and (to a lesser degree) experience in project areas, strength in computation and in verbal and written communication, and genuine commitment to methodological and cross-disciplinary research in quantitative genetics.
Women, persons with disabilities, and members of underrepresented minority groups are particularly encouraged to apply. US citizenship or permanent resident status is not required, but US citizenship or permanent residents are given priority consideration.
The Section on Statistical Genetics at UAB has at present seven faculty members and 4 post-doctoral fellows. The Department of Biostatistics has a total of 15 faculty members. For more information on the Section on Statistical Genetics, please visit our Website at http://www.soph.uab.edu/statgenetics.
Application should consist of a letter of interest containing addresses, telephone numbers and citizenship status; names of three of references, a CV with publication record and/or thesis topic, and a one-page statement of interest. Please submit the application to:
David B. Allison, Ph.D.
Professor & Head, Section on Statistical Genetics
Department of Biostatistics, RPHB 327
University of Alabama at Birmingham
1665 University Boulevard
Birmingham, Alabama 35294-0022
Phone: 205-975-9169
Fax: 205-975-2540
Email:Dallison@UAB.edu
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