Classification Society of North America
Mel Janowitz, President
Fionn Murtagh, President-Elect
Mike Larsen, Newsletter Editor

Classification Society of North America (CSNA) Newsletter

October 2007, Issue #77

Contents

           Notes from the Newsletter Editor
  2008 CSNA Annual Conference Information
  Secretary's report
  NEW: Classification Society Distinguished Dissertation Award
  Conference Listings (and other notes)

This and previous issues of the newsletter can be read online through the CSNA web page ( http://www.classification-society.org/csna/csna.html ) and here . All suggestions are welcome! (larsen at iastate dot edu).

Notes from Newsletter Editor

    The 2007 CSNA meeting occured at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in June. The meeting facilities were very nice and the program was quite interesting. The 2008 CSNA meeting will take place at Washington University in St. Louis. Please consider attending and submitting an abstract.

    Stan Sclove reports on the 2007 meeting and on the Journal.

    The Classification Society announces the first annual "Classification Society Distinguished Dissertation Award." Applications due February 1, 2008. This represents a unique opportunity to recognize excellence in new and recent PhDs working in classification and clustering.

    Best regards,
    Mike

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CSNA Annual Conference Information

From the conference organizers:

The 2008 Annual Meeting of the Classification Society (CSNA) is being organized by Doug Steinley (Univ. of Missouri) and Bill Shannon (Washington Univ.) to be held at the Washington University campus in early June (most likely June 5-7).

We hope to make this conference the best ever so are asking for your support.

As the Classification Society (CSNA) evolves to address the clustering and classification problems of today (many focused on massively large datasets) we are asking the members at this point to propose SESSIONS that might be included in the meeting schedule.

We hope that the members will help Doug and I identify leaders in the field of clustering and classification (both applied and theoretical) to invite to give talks on their work and recruit to the Classification Society (CSNA). Many of us believe we are at a transition period in the society and the best way to continue the amazing success CSNA has had over the last 20 years or so is to have a growing membership of 'new' researchers coming into the group.

Thank you for your support and contributions. Please do not hesitate to contact Doug or I directly or to send suggestions through the list server: Doug Steinley at steinleyd at missouri dot edu; Bill Shannon at wshannon at wustl dot .edu.

Bill Shannon
Associate Professor of Biostatistics in Medicine Washington University School of Medicine

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Report from Stanley L. Sclove, Secretary

Issue No. 1, Vol. 24 (2007) of the Journal of Classification has gone to press and has been mailed to subscribers. The editor is Willem Heiser of Leiden University. The journal was mailed with the bibliographic CD, Classification Literature Automated Search Service, now containing several out-of-print books on classification and clustering. This bibliographic service has been edited by Fionn Murtagh. Murtagh will become President of CSNA (and of the British Classification Society) in January, whereupon Michael J. Kurtz of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory will become editor.

The CSNA 2007 annual meeting was held at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, June 7-10, overlapping with the meeting of the Digital Humanities group. The meeting was sponsored by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, the UIUC College of Education and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. The organizers of the meeting were David Dubin and Carolyn Anderson. The keynote speaker was Dr. Michael J. Kurtz of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Dr. Kurtz spoke on The Astronomical Information Network. Further information on the annual meeting is available at http://www.classification-society.org/csna/csna07.html.

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The Classification Society Distinguished Dissertation Award

The Classification Society Distinguished Dissertation Award supported by Chapman and Hall/CRC

The Award will be for the best PhD (or approximately equivalent doctoral) dissertation nomimated by an annual deadline. The theme is clustering, classification, related areas of data analysis, encompassing both associated theory and/or applications.

The Award is administered by CSNA. An evaluation committee is set up by CSNA to evaluate the nominated theses. This committee should have between 3 and 5 members. The chair of the committee is appointed by the CSNA President. The committee is selected by the committee chair, in conjunction with the CSNA President, and is approved by the CSNA Board.

In 2007-2008, the evaluation committee is: Fionn Murtagh (chair, Dept. of Computer Science, Royal Holloway, University of London), Samantha Prins (Dept. of Mathematics & Statistics, James Madison University), Douglas Steinley (Dept. of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri-Columbia) and Willem Heiser (Dept. of Psychology, University of Leiden).

Members of the evaluation committee must declare any potential conflict of interest. A member of the evaluation committee cannot play any role in regard to evaluating his/her own PhDs, nor also in regard to nominations where there has been a direct collaborative link (e.g. through joint publications).

Nominations will be through the evaluation committee chair. It may be useful to have printed copies sent to committee members, but in any case web-accessible versions have to be made available. The evaluation panel may seek one or two external referee reports for each nominated dissertation.

Typical criteria for nomination for the Award include: (i) the most innovative or impressive work in theory/methodology, or the most innovatative or well developed application(s); and (ii) the literature review has to be thorough.

Nominations are to be received by 1 February each year, from the author (PhD), their advisor/supervisor, or other related person. Nomination includes the name and contact points, an online copy of the dissertation, and a short description of why the dissertation merits the award (see above). A decision is made by the evaluation committee by 1 May. The evaluation committee can recommend one award; an award and a runner-up; two joint winners; or other combinations if they think it appropriate.

For the next submission deadline, 1 February 2008, nominated PhDs have to have been successfully completed in the calendar years 2005, 2006 or 2007.

Awards are ratified by the CSNA Board. Publicity is made in the CSNA and other newsletters, and on relevant websites. The short-list of nominated dissertations will also be openly published.

For non-English language theses, it is requested to provide an extended abstract, and (where relevant) pointers to papers associated with the thesis that have been published.

In 2008 the Award totals US$ 500 in book vouchers from Chapman and Hall/CRC. The winner will be invited to make a presentation in a special plenary session at the CSNA Annual Meeting. Up to $500 of the Award winner's travel expenses to the Annual Meeting will be covered by CSNA.

Contact for information and nominations: fmurtagh at acm dot org

http://www.classification-society.org/csna/dissaward.html

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Conference and Other Listings

IFCS 2009

The next IFCS Conference will be in Dresden, Germany, on 13-18 March 2009. See http://www.ifcs2009.de.

NIPS

CALL FOR WORKSHOP PROPOSALS. NIPS 2007 Post-Conference Workshops -- December 7 and 8, 2007. Neural Information Processing Systems -- Natural and Synthetic. Whistler Resort & Spa and the Whistler Hilton Resort & Spa, BC, CANADA. http://www.nips.cc/.
CALL FOR DEMONSTRATIONS - NIPS 2007. Neural Information Processing Systems -- Natural and Synthetic NIPS 2006 Conference -- December 3 - 6, 2007 Hyatt Regency Vancouver, BC, CANADA. http://www.nips.cc/.

Recursos Bibliotecarios

A new web page for RECBIB - Resources Librarians (http://www.recbib.es).
Julian Marquina, Administrator RECBIB Web - Resources Librarians

Other Listings

The IFCS conference page: http://www.classification-society.org/ifcsconf.html

American Statistical Association meetings page: http://www.amstat.org/meetings

The International Biometric Society conferences page: http://www.tibs.org/conferences.htm

Institute of Mathematical Statistics meetings page: http://www.imstat.org/meetings/

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About CSNA

The WWW and ascii version of the CSNA Newsletter is made available as a service of the Classification Society of North America (web site: http://www.classification-society.org/csna/csna.html ). Information on becoming a member of CSNA is available at the CSNA website.

CSNA Webmaster: Dave Dubin, ddubin at uiuc dot edu      
Newsletter editor: Mike Larsen, larsen at iastate dot edu

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