Volume 44 • Issue 2 IMS Bulletin March 2015 New Researchers in Seattle CONTENTS 17th IMS New Researchers Conference 1 New Researchers in Seattle August 6–8, 2015 University of Washington, Seattle, WA 2 Members’ News: Emery Brown, Richard Samworth, The 17th IMS New Researchers Conference is an annual meeting organized under the David Spiegelhalter auspices of the IMS, and jointly sponsored this year by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Google, and other federal agencies and industry sponsors. The conference is 3 Other news: B.K. Roy; Jerome Sacks Award; New hosted by the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Washington and will be IMS Textbook published held just prior to the 2015 Joint Statistical Meetings in Seattle (see below). The purpose of the conference is to promote interaction and networking among new 4 Robert Adler: TOPOS part 4 researchers in probability and statistics. If you received a PhD in or after 2010, or expect 6 Medallion Lecture preview: to defend your thesis by the end of 2015, you are eligible to apply to attend. Due to Jiashun Jin limited space, participation is by invitation only. http://depts.washington.edu/imsnrc17/ 7 Hand Writing: The More information may be found at including Improbability Principle a link to the application information page. Application deadline is March 27, 2015. Higher priority will be given to first-time applicants. Women and minorities are 8 The wavelet boom and its statistical children encouraged to apply. Contingent on the availability of funds, financial support for travel and accommodation may be provided. However, participants are strongly encouraged to 10 Obituaries: Steve Arnold, seek partial funding from other sources. Eugene Dynkin, Henry Contact: [email protected] Teicher 12 Recent papers: Statistics JSM 2015 Surveys; Electronic Journal of August 8–13, 2015, Seattle, WA Statistics The Joint Statistical Meetings in Seattle, WA, take place from August 8–13, 2015. JSM 15 Student Puzzle Corner 8 also includes the next IMS Annual Meeting. If you have never been to JSM it’s a great experience but, since it’s such a large meeting (typically over 5000 delegates) it can be a 16 Meeting report: ICCS-13 little overwhelming for the newcomers. Check out the advice on the First Time Attendees 17 Terence’s Stuff: Why do we page: http://www.amstat.org/meetings/jsm/2015/firsttimeattendees.cfm. Registration and do research? housing reservations open April 30, 2015. 18 IMS meetings 22 Other meetings Seattle is the largest city in the Pacific 26 Employment Opportunities Northwest region of North America, 27 International Calendar and the the fast- est-growing major city in the United Information for Advertisers 31 States. Its popula- tion is set to (tem- porarily) expand by about 5000 people… Read it online at during JSM from August 8–13, 2015. http://bulletin.imstat.org Will you be among them? IMSBulletin 2 . IMS Bulletin Volume 44 . Issue 2 Volume 44 • Issue 2 March 2015 IMS Members’ News ISSN 1544-1881 Emery N. Brown elected to US National Academy of Engineering Contact information On February 5, The National Academy of Engineering announced IMS Bulletin Editor: Anirban DasGupta that IMS member Emery N. Brown, the Warren M. Zapol Professor Assistant Editor: Tati Howell of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Contributing Editors: Robert Adler, Peter Hospital and the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Bickel, Stéphane Boucheron, David Hand, Vlada Limic, Xiao-Li Meng, Dimitris Engineering and Computational Neuroscience at MIT, was elected Politis, Terry Speed and Hadley Wickham to the National Academy of Engineering. Dr. Brown is now one of the few people who are members of all three branches of the National Emery Brown Contact the IMS Bulletin by email: Academies (Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences and e [email protected] w http://bulletin.imstat.org the National Academy of Engineering). Dr. Brown is recognized “for development of neural https://www.facebook.com/IMSTATI signal processing algorithms for understanding memory encoding and modeling of brain states of anesthesia.” Contact the IMS regarding your dues, membership, subscriptions, orders or Also among those elected this year is Ingrid Daubechies, James B. Duke Professor of change of address: Mathematics at Duke University, “for contributions to the mathematics and applications of IMS Dues and Subscriptions Office wavelets.” 9650 Rockville Pike, Suite L3503A See the full list at http://www.nae.edu/Projects/MediaRoom/20095/130169/130172.aspx Bethesda, MD 20814-3998 USA t 877-557-4674 [toll-free in USA] Richard Samworth receives Leverhulme Prize t +1 216 295 5661[international] Philip Leverhulme Prizes recognize the achievement of outstanding researchers whose work f +1 301 634 7099 has already attracted international recognition and whose future career is exceptionally e [email protected] promising. Among the 30 recipients of the 2014 Leverhulme Prize was Professor Richard Samworth, Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics, University of Contact the IMS regarding any other matter, including advertising, copyright Cambridge. The prize is an award of £100,000 (approx US$150,000) a year, awarded across a permission, offprint orders, copyright range of academic disciplines (in 2014 Mathematics and Statistics was one of the six chosen transfer, societal matters, meetings, fellows areas). nominations and content of publications: Richard’s Leverhulme Prize was for his “broad and influential foundational and meth- Executive Director, Elyse Gustafson odological contributions to many areas of Statistics, including non-parametric maximum IMS Business Office likelihood, classification; high-dimensional penalized regression and model selection; density PO Box 22718, Beachwood OH 44122, USA estimation; and the bootstrap. His seminal contributions on nonparametric classification, t 877-557-4674 [toll-free in USA] one of the most important and rapidly growing areas on the interface between Statistics and t +1 216 295 5661[international] Machine Learning, have had a profound impact on the development of the field. He has also f +1 216 295 5661 demonstrated outstanding leadership qualities in his activities on behalf of many of the world’s e [email protected] leading statistical societies and journals, and his work in building up Statistics within the University of Cambridge.” Richard was elected an IMS Fellow last year. Executive Committee President: Erwin Bolthausen David Spiegelhalter knighted [email protected] Professor David Spiegelhalter, OBE FRS, who is Winton Professor for the Public President-Elect: Richard Davis [email protected] Understanding of Risk at the University of Cambridge, UK (and is occasionally known to the Past President: Bin Yu public as “Professor Risk”) received a knighthood in last year’s Queen’s Birthday Honours list [email protected] “for services to Statistics”. Speaking of the award, Sir David said, “Work on statistics doesn’t Treasurer: Jean Opsomer usually get much attention, and so it’s a bit of a surprise to get such a great honour for doing [email protected] things with numbers.” Program Secretary: Judith Rousseau [email protected] Executive Secretary: Aurore Delaigle Although David actually was knighted last year, this news only reached us recently. If you hear [email protected] about an IMS member receiving an award, don’t forget to tell us: [email protected]. Thanks! = access published papers online March . 2015 IMS Bulletin . 3 IMS Journals and Publications Annals of Statistics: Peter Hall and Runze Li http://imstat.org/aos http://projecteuclid.org/aos Annals of Applied Statistics: Stephen Fienberg Other news http://imstat.org/aoas http://projecteuclid.org/aoas ISI Director Bimal K Roy receives civilian award Annals of Probability: Maria Eulalia Vares http://imstat.org/aop Professor Bimal K. Roy, Director of the Indian Statistical Institute, was given the Padma http://projecteuclid.org/aop Shri award, one of the highest civic honors in India, by the central government of India on Annals of Applied Probability: Timo Seppäläinen http://imstat.org/aap January 26, 2015. Professor Roy was honored for his versatile and innovative contributions to http://projecteuclid.org/aoap numerous areas of theoretical computer science, cryptanalysis, statistical design, combinatorial Statistical Science: Peter Green mathematics, and applications of modern statistics to ecology and public health. He is http://imstat.org/sts http://projecteuclid.org/ss primarily responsible for initiation of probabilistic cryptanalysis of ciphertexts driven by IMS Collections multiple feedback registers and complex unknown combining functions, and theoretical study http://imstat.org/publications/imscollections.htm of design and security analysis of wireless sensor networks. His research on cryptanalysis and http://projecteuclid.org/imsc IMS Monographs and IMS Textbooks: David Cox sensor networks was rewardingly influenced by his foundations in statistical design, graph http://imstat.org/cup/ theory, and combinatorics. He took a leadership role in a difficult ecological study in the IMS Co-sponsored Journals and coastal rainforest areas in the state of West Bengal, and in a study of arsenic hazards in India. Publications Professor Roy was previously honored with multiple prestigious awards by the IBM and Electronic Journal of Statistics: George Michailidis Microsoft for being at the frontier of integrative multidisciplinary