THE ISBA BULLETIN Vol. 17 No. 1 March 2010 The official bulletin of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis AMESSAGE FROM THE related interests. The process to form a new sec- PRESIDENT tion is amazingly simple. Formally, all that is needed is a petition by 30 members to propose Peter M¨uller the bylaws and initial officers of a proposed sec- ISBA President, 2010 tion. The ISBA Board considers the proposal and [email protected] votes on the proposal. That’s all. I hope that I would first like to thank Mike West for his ser- ISBA/BNP will be followed by other section pro- vice as past president. Among many other issues posals. A natural focus point is any established Mike has provided invaluable service to ISBA series of workshops or other events. For exam- by revising and reviving our IT infrastructure. ple, for ISBA/BNP the organization of the BNP Many of you must have already used the nifty workshops is the natural purpose and activity of new on-line membership service. The elected the new section. new officers for 2010 and the new editors were Other exciting events in the upcoming year are already mentioned in the last Bulletin. In ad- several meetings organized and co-sponsored by dition to these new officers I welcome our new ISBA. Alex Schmidt is summarizing the many 2011 program chair Igor Pr ¨unster. Since join- upcoming meetings elsewhere in this Bulletin. If ing the program council in January Igor has al- you are. Continued on page 2. ready worked hard to help with the selection of the ISBA travel awards. Thanks! Another new appointment is David Dunson as the new chair In this issue of the Membership Committee. ® A MESSAGE FROM THE BA EDITOR We will soon begin the process to organize Page 3 the 2011 ISBA elections, starting with the forma- tion of the nomination committee. As laid out ® FROM THE PROGRAM COUNCIL in the ISBA bylaws the nomination committee is Page 4 chaired by the past president. All members are invited to make suggestions for membership in ® ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY the nomination committee. Please forward sug- Page 5 gestions to me. ® BAYESIAN HISTORY In the past years it has occasionally been pro- Page 7 posed to initiate sections in ISBA. The constitu- tion provides for the possibility of sections and ® APPLICATIONS the policy on sections lays out a very simple pro- Page 12 cess to launch sections. I believe that the for- mation of sections could be a wonderful oppor- ® SOFTWARE HIGHLIGHT tunity to keep ISBA relevant for our members, Page 16 and to ensure that ISBA activities continue to ® STUDENTS’ CORNER reflect the forefront of current developments in Page 18 Bayesian analysis. A specific proposal for an ISBA section on Bayesian nonparametrics (BNP) ® NEWS FROM THE WORLD is currently being prepared by some members. Page 18 There is a long running series of workshops that loosely defines a community of researchers with ISBA Bulletin, 17(1), March 2010 MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT, Continued consider to nominate the paper for the Lindley from page 1. involved in organizing any event Prize. related to Bayesian analysis, please consider to For the upcoming World Meeting we are include ISBA co-sponsorship. The rules for set- happy to be able to provide a large number of ting up ISBA co-sponsorship are laid out on travel awards. Supported from a variety of fund- our homepage http://www.bayesian.org (se- ing sources we are able to provide partial sup- lect ”ISBA business” and ”meetings”). port for 62 participants. This includes travel Surely the most important ISBA event in 2010 support from ASA/SBSS for the finalists of the is the ISBA World Meeting and Valencia Meet- jointly ISBA and SBSS supported Savage award, ing. The scientific program committee, chaired additional SBSS travel support for several senior by the 2009 program chair Herbie Lee, has done graduate students and young researchers within an outstanding job to prepare a stunning pro- 2 years of their Ph.D. degree. An important gram. The process included open submission of funding source is an NSF (US National Science abstracts and a blinded selection process. We are Foundation) conference grant that provides par- very happy to note that the resulting program in- tial travel support for 13 young US investigators. cludes a large percentage of young researchers, NIH (US National Institutes of Health) is provid- and thus naturally many new ideas. Please join ing partial travel support for 7 young US inves- us in particular for the Savage award session tigators who present cancer related work (The when the finalists for the Savage thesis award are award is still subject to final approval). This presenting. The Savage prize is jointly organized reflects the increasing importance of Bayesian by ISBA and ASA/SBSS (the Section on Bayesian statistics in biomedical research in general and in Statistical Science of the American Statistical As- cancer research in particular. More travel awards sociation). The Savage finalists session is a won- are supported by ISBA, including the Pilar Igle- derful opportunity to meet tomorrow’s leaders of sias travel fund to support participants from de- Bayesian statistics. veloping countries and the ISBA Lifetime Members The Savage prize is one of several prizes that Award. are awarded by ISBA. Besides the Savage Award One of the most important decisions for ISBA ISBA organizes and awards the De Groot Prize in the upcoming year is the choice of the site for a book in statistical science, the Lindley Prize for the 2012 ISBA World Meeting. We have re- for the best contributed paper presented at the ceived several excellent pre-proposals and have World Meeting, and the Mitchell Prize for the best invited representatives for each pre-proposal to applied Bayesian paper. Please watch out for the present their proposals during the upcoming announcements for submissions for these prizes. World Meeting in Benidorm. The proposals will In particular, we will consider a re-organization be discussed in the General Member Meeting and of the submission process for the Lindley Prize. If a final choice will be made by the Board. ISBA you notice a particularly outstanding paper pre- has the wonderful problem of chosing between sented at the upcoming World Meeting, please several outstanding alternatives! L AMESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR Editors. I am now delighted to continue these ef- forts. First, I want to thank Rapahel Gottardo for his work as Editor and for the advice and help Manuel Mendoza he has provided me during this transition. I also [email protected] want to thank Mayetri Gupta who last December finished her term as Associate Editor of the Ap- In November 1992, the first issue of this Bulletin plications section. On the other hand, I can say appeared as the ISBA NEWSLETTER under the that it has been a pleasure to work on the pro- editorship of Tom Leonard. During almost 18 duction of this first 2010 issue. The team of As- years, we have all witnessed the steady improve- sociated Editors that have, very kindly, agreed to ment of this means of communication of our so- continue their work for the Bulletin are quite ex- ciety. This achievement has been possible only perienced and this makes my task enjoyable. I because of the collaboration of all in the Bayesian am sure that we will produce a Bulletin with the community and the enthusiastic work of the past quality standard that our community requires Content 2 www.bayesian.org ISBA Bulletin, 17(1), March 2010 BAYESIAN ANALYSIS - A MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR and that several new proposals will emerge from by Ciprian Crainiceanu explores the analysis of our ongoing exchange of ideas. complex data from a different perspective. I also In this number, you will find most of the usual hope you will find interesting the contribution sections with interesting information. Particu- by Tapen Sinha and myself on the History of larly, I would like to call your attention to the Bayesian Statistics. article by Marc Suchard, Chris Holmes and Mike I want to encourage all members of ISBA to West on graphic processing unit computing. This contribute with their suggestions and specific is a timely introduction to a rather new ap- manuscripts and announcements for the existing proach to massive computing, whose long-term sections. Please do not hesitate to contact any impact in Bayesian Analysis is highly promis- member of the Editorial Board. Finally, I also ing. We thank the authors for bringing this in- want to thank Pedro Regueiro for his technical novative subject to our Bulletin. In close re- assistance with the typesetting of this Bulletin. L lation, the article on Bayesian functional data BAYESIAN ANALYSIS - A MESSAGE FROM THE EDITOR FIRST WORDS Sivia give additional context for the problem and the methodology. The remainder of the issue fea- Herbie Lee tures seven other fine articles on topics from pri- Editor-in-Chief ors to methodology to an application in medical [email protected] image analysis. We have a great team assembled on our edi- I am greatly honored to be following Rob Kass torial board, and I am grateful for all their help. and Brad Carlin as the next Editor-in-Chief of I am particularly thankful that Pantelis Vlachos Bayesian Analysis, our society’s journal. They is continuing on as system managing editor, as have done a great job launching and growing the he continues to be invaluable in the running and journal, and I hope to continue its upward trajec- production of the journal. I am also thankful tory.