Volume 39 • Issue 10 IMS1935–2010 Bulletin December 2010 Editor’s farewell message Contents Xuming He writes: My term as Editor ends with this very issue. Ten times a year, I 1 Editor’s farewell worried about whether the Bulletin would go out on schedule, both electronic and print versions, and whether enough of our members would find the contents interest- 2 Members’ News: C R Rao; P K Sen; Adrian Smith; Igor ing and informative. Those worries however never turned into headaches. In fact, I Vajda had something to look forward to each time, thanks to our excellent editorial team and enthusiastic contributions from our members. No wonder I have become a little 3 IMS Awards nostalgic as I complete my four years of editorship. 4 Other Awards The Bulletin provides a place to remember the past. We publish obituaries of our 5–7 Obituaries: Julian Besag; Fellows, members, and significant friends of the IMS. Our society is built upon on Hermann Witting; Dan Brunk their legacy. This year, we celebrated the 75th anniversary of the IMS by a number of special articles contributed by some of our senior members, who told us how 7 NSF-CBMS lecturers important the IMS has been to their professional lives. If you missed any, these issues 9 How to Publish: IMS-CUP of the Bulletin can be found at http://bulletin.imstat.org. As Editor, my heart also beats book series with the younger members of our profession. From the profile of new faculty at the 10 Terence’s Stuff: Enduring North Carolina State University in the January/February 2007 issue to our report on values the CAREER awards to four junior faculty members at Georgia Tech in the last issue, I 11 IMS meetings hope that we have made a point that the Bulletin is also a place for the future. I always want your voices to be heard. Through Member’s News, Members’ 15 Other meetings Discoveries, Letters to the Editor, and special issues on topics of interest, the Bulletin 17 Employment Opportunities is a place to share news, honors, and opinions in our community. It is clear from each 23 International Calendar of issue of the Bulletin that our community is growing with hope and vigor. Statistical Events I would like to thank our Contributing Editors, Peter Bickel, Louis Chen, Rick Durrett, Nicole Lazar, and Terry Speed, for staying with me for four years. They helped 27 Information for Advertisers in many ways by contributing articles, and providing leads, ideas, and equally impor- tantly, courage to me as Editor. Terence’s Stuff has become a page of choice for many, and Rick’s Ramblings add an interesting dimension to our columns. When I meet colleagues from east to west, I am often asked how the Bulletin is edited, and how I decide what to publish. There’s no doubt that our members care about the Bulletin. My short answer is that Tati Howell, our Assistant Editor, magically puts all the material together. I have enjoyed working with her, and am very grateful for her dedicated editorial work month in, month out. My gratitude also goes to my home department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for its continual support and to my wife and children who believe in what I do for the profession. It is my family, colleagues, and friends who have made it possible for me to complete my editorship without interruption to my regular duties as a professor. I bring the good news that Dimitris N. Politis will assume editorship from January. I know that he is excited about making the Bulletin a better publication. It is a great time for me to move on to focus on other duties and responsibilities. Of course, I will be reading, and possibly writing for, the Bulletin for many more years to come! IMS Bulletin 2 . IMs Bulletin Volume 39 . Issue 10 Volume 39 • Issue 10 December 2010 IMS members’ news ISSN 1544-1881 C R Rao receives India Science Award Contact information C. R. Rao has received India’s highest science IMS Bulletin Editor: Xuming He award from the Prime Minister of India, Dr Assistant Editor: Tati Howell Manmohan Singh. The India Science Award Contributing Editors: Peter Bickel, Louis Chen, recognizes major contributions of a path- Rick Durrett, Nicole Lazar, Terry Speed breaking nature in any branch of science, To contact the IMS Bulletin: engineering and medicine. IMS Bulletin The award consists of a gold medal, a 2 Lampern View, Uley, Dursley GL11 5TD plaque with photo and citation, and an UK award of Rs.25 Lakhs (US$55,000). C R Rao [left] receives the India Science Award from the e [email protected] Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh [right] To contact the IMS regarding your dues, Pranab K. Sen on film membership, subscriptions, orders or change of address: On the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill IMS Dues and Subscriptions Office Gillings School of Global Public Health website, 9650 Rockville Pike, Suite L3503A http://www.sph.unc.edu ether is a 30-minute video interview Bethesda MD 20814-3998 with IMS Fellow Pranab. K Sen. The video, “A conversation USA with P. K. Sen,” introduced by John Preisser, Research t 877-557-4674 [toll-free in USA] Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at UNC A screenshot from the video t +1 216 295 5661[international] Gillings School of Global Public Health, is a conversation f +1 301 634 7099 e [email protected] between Professor Sen and Malay Ghosh (University of Florida) and Michael Schell (H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, Florida). To contact the IMS regarding any other matter, including advertising, copyright Adrian Smith listed in The Times ‘Eureka 100’ list permission, offprint orders, copyright Adrian Smith TheTimes’ transfer, societal matters, meetings, fellows IMS Fellow Professor is listed in the UK newspaper “Eureka 100: nominations and content of publications: The Science List” (in the October 2010 Eureka). This “admittedly unscientific” list set out Executive Director, Elyse Gustafson to find the 100 most important people in British science and engineering—and yet they IMS Business Office listed only one statistician! PO Box 22718, Beachwood OH 44122, USA t 877-557-4674 [toll-free in USA] Igor Vajda: 1942–2010 t +1 216 295 5661[international] Dr. Igor Vajda, Principal Researcher at f +1 216 295 5661 the Institute of Information Theory and e [email protected] Automation of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, died on May 2, 2010, Executive Committee aged 67. He was a leading figure in the area President: Peter Hall of information-theoretic statistical inference [email protected] and published extensively in many statistical President-Elect: Ruth Williams [email protected] journals on this and other topics. He was Past President: J. Michael Steele the author of the book Theory of Statistical [email protected] Inference and Information (1989) and Treasurer: Jean Opsomer co-author (together with F. Liese) of the [email protected] monograph Convex Statistical Distances Program Secretary: Guenther Walther [email protected] (1987). Executive Secretary: Marten Wegkamp An obituary of Dr. Vajda will be pub- [email protected] lished in a future issue. IMS Editors December . 2010 IMs Bulletin . 3 IMS Journals and Publications Annals of Statistics: Peter Bühlmann and Tony Cai http://imstat.org/aos Annals of Applied Statistics: Bradley Efron, Stephen IMS Awards Fienberg, Michael Stein, Karen Kafadar & Samuel Kou http://imstat.org/aoas Nomination for Tweedie New Researcher Award Deadline: December 1, 2010 Annals of Probability: Ofer Zeitouni To present the Tweedie New Researcher Invited Lecture at the Fourteenth Meeting of New http://imstat.org/aop Researchers in Statistics and Probability, immediately preceding next year’s JSM in Miami, Annals of Applied Probability: Andrew Barbour Florida. Details at http://imstat.org/awards/tweedie.html http://imstat.org/aap Statistical Science: David Madigan http://imstat.org/sts Nomination for IMS Fellowship Deadline: January 31, 2011 IMS Lecture Notes – Monograph Series In order to qualify for Fellowship, the candidate shall have demonstrated distinction in http://imstat.org/publications/lecnotes.htm IMS Collections research in statistics or probability, by publication of independent work of merit. This http://imstat.org/publications/ qualification may be partly or wholly waived in the case of: imscollections.htm 1 a candidate of well-established leadership whose contributions to the field of statistics NSF-CBMS Regional Conference Series in Probability and Statistics: http://imstat.org/publications/nsf.htm or probability other than original research shall be judged of equal value; or 2 a candidate of well-established leadership in the application of statistics or probability, IMS Co-sponsored Journals and Publications whose work has contributed greatly to the utility of and the appreciation of these areas. Electronic Journal of Statistics: David Ruppert Candidates for fellowship should be members of IMS on December 1 of the year preceding http://imstat.org/ejs their nomination, and should have been members of the IMS for at least two years. Electronic Journal of Probability: Bálint Tóth http://www.math.washington.edu/~ejpecp Electronic submission is highly encouraged. Please read all the details at http://imstat. Electronic Communications in Probability: org/awards/fellows.htm Timo Seppäläinen http://www.math.washington.edu/~ejpecp /ECP/index.php Laha Awards for travel to JSM Miami Deadline: February 1, 2011 Current Index to Statistics: George Styan Travel awards for students and new graduates are available for travel to the IMS Annual http://www.statindex.org Meeting, which will be at the 2011 Joint Statistical Meetings in Miami Beach, Florida, Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics: Richard Levine from July 30 to August 4.