Volume 43 • Issue 2 IMS Bulletin March 2014 New Researchers Conference The 16th IMS New Researchers Conference is an annual meeting organized under the CONTENTS auspices of the IMS, and jointly sponsored this year by the National Science Foundation 1 New Researchers (NSF), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), and other federal agencies and industry Conference sponsors. This year the conference is hosted by the Department of Statistics at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and will be held July 31–August 2. As is cus- 2–3 Members’ News: Susan tomary, the New Researchers Conference will take place immediately before, and in the Holmes; C R Rao; Klaus vicinity of, the Joint Statistical Meetings, which this year is in downtown Boston, a few Krickeberg; Jim Pitman; Peter miles away, from August 2–7. Hall The purpose of the New Researchers Conference is to promote interaction and net- 4 Robert Adler: TOPOS, and working among new researchers in probability and statistics. Any young researcher who why you should care about it has received a PhD on or after 2009, or expects to defend his or her thesis by the end of 6 Brazilian Journal of 2014, is eligible to attend. Due to limited space, participation is by invitation only. Probability and Statistics; Confirmed participants include Edo Airoldi, Stephen Fienberg, Peter Hall, Michael Child care Jordan, Alan Karr, Jun Liu, Xiao-Li Meng, Susan Murphy, Giovanni Parmigiani, Donald 7 Student Puzzle Corner Rubin, Steven Scott and Bin Yu. More information may be found at the NRC website, http://www.stat.harvard.edu/ 9 Vlada’s Point: The Introduction NRC2014/ including a link to the application information page. The application deadline is March 24, 2014. Applicants who are accepted will receive information on meeting Project Euclid website 10 location and housing. Higher priority will be given to first-time applicants. Women and 11 Recent Papers: Bernoulli, minorities are encouraged to apply. Contingent on the availability of funds, financial sup- Statistics Surveys port for travel and accommodation may be provided. However, participants are strongly 12 Recent Papers: Electronic encouraged to seek partial funding from other sources. Journal of Probability; If you have questions about the NRC, please visit the website or contact the organizers Electronic Communications in e [email protected] Probability The 2014 Joint Statistical Meetings http://www.amstat.org/meetings/jsm/2014/( ) will 13 Terence’s Stuff: Give be held August 2–7, Industry a Chance 2014, at the Boston The statue of John Harvard at Harvard Convention and University, known as the ‘Statue of the 14 Obituary: Marc Yor Three Lies’—though this is itself disputed: Exhibition Center, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_ 15 IMS meetings 415 Summer Street, Harvard_(statue) 20 Other meetings Boston, MA 02210. If you have sub- 26 Employment Opportunities mitted an abstract 28 International Calendar for JSM, you will be 31 Information for Advertisers able to edit it online between March 31 and April 17. JSM registration Read it online at and housing reserva- http://bulletin.imstat.org tions open May 1. Gobetz / Flikr Wally Photo: IMSBulletin 2 . IMS Bulletin Volume 43 . Issue 2 Volume 43 • Issue 2 March 2014 IMS Members’ News ISSN 1544-1881 Susan Holmes receives $6.2M NIH Transformative Research Award Contact information Susan Holmes, Professor of Statistics at Stanford University and IMS Bulletin Editor: Anirban DasGupta director of the Mathematical and Computational Science Program, Assistant Editor: Tati Howell has received a substantial NIH award. Together with David Relman, Contributing Editors: Robert Adler, Peter MD, she received a Transformative Research Award from the US Bickel, Stéphane Boucheron, David Hand, Vlada Limic, Xiao-Li Meng, Dimitris National Institutes of Health on September 30, 2013. “These awards Politis, Terry Speed and Hadley Wickham recognize and support the kind of creative thinking that has put Stanford on the map as the epicenter of innovation,” said Lloyd Susan Holmes Contact the IMS Bulletin by email: Minor, MD, dean of the School of Medicine. The team will use their e [email protected] w http://bulletin.imstat.org $6.2 million in funding to examine the effects of perturbations in humans’ microbial ecology. https://www.facebook.com/IMSTATI Using novel statistical approaches that incorporate sparse multi-table data, this project aims to integrate the metabolic, transcriptomic and ecological community information to Contact the IMS regarding your dues, membership, subscriptions, orders or predict resilience in the human microbiome. change of address: Humans have co-evolved with complex, dynamic internal microbial communities that IMS Dues and Subscriptions Office play essential roles in nutrition, metabolism, immunity and numerous other aspects of our 9650 Rockville Pike, Suite L3503A physiology. Exposure to antibiotics or other chemicals, as well as dietary shifts, can disturb Bethesda, MD 20814-3998 USA or destabilize the microbial communities that dwell in the gut, with potentially severe and t 877-557-4674 [toll-free in USA] sustained negative impacts on health, including allergic disease, pathogen invasion, obesity and t +1 216 295 5661[international] various chronic inflammatory disorders. f +1 301 634 7099 The investigators will monitor the microbial ecosystems of healthy humans before, during e [email protected] and after several types of planned disturbance, such as changes in diet or antibiotic adminis- tration. They will apply novel mathematical methods to the data generated from these clinical Contact the IMS regarding any other matter, including advertising, copyright experiments and identify features associated with future stability or recovery from these dis- permission, offprint orders, copyright turbances, with the goal of predicting disease and restoring health. For more information, see transfer, societal matters, meetings, fellows http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2013/september/pioneer-0930.html#sthash.2OvorfPV.dpuf. nominations and content of publications: Executive Director, Elyse Gustafson C R Rao Gallery opened in Hyderabad Klaus Krickeberg IMS Business Office The CRRao Gallery, depicting the life in statistics ofC.R. Rao over a IMS Fellow Klaus PO Box 22718, Beachwood Krickeberg OH 44122, USA period of 65 years (40 years at the Indian Statistical Institute and 25 has t 877-557-4674 [toll-free in USA] years in the USA, at Penn State and University of Pittsburgh) was been awarded an t +1 216 295 5661[international] inaugurated by Dr. V. Ramakrishnan, Nobel Laureate, FRS, Kt., at Honorary Doctorate f +1 216 295 5661 the end of the International Year of Statistics on 22 December 2013, by the Vietnam e [email protected] in the C.R.Rao Advanced Institute of Mathematics, Statistics and National University Computer Science at Hyderabad, India. The gallery is open to the Ho Chi Minh-City Executive Committee public, and aims to encourage students to do research in statistics to for contributions President: Bin Yu meet the increasing demand for statisticians for wise decision making to the statistical [email protected] under uncertainty in all areas of human endeavor. sciences and public President-Elect: Erwin Bolthausen [email protected] health in Vietnam. Past President: Hans R. Künsch Jim Pitman honored with birthday conference [email protected] David Aldous is organising a conference in celebration of former Treasurer: Jean Opsomer IMS President Jim Pitman’s 65th birthday: Combinatorial Stochastic [email protected] Processes (June 20–21, 2014, at UC San Diego, California.) Program Secretary: Judith Rousseau [email protected] See the full announcement on page 20 or read details at the Executive Secretary: Aurore Delaigle meeting’s website, http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~aldous/Pitman_ [email protected] Conference/ Klaus Krickeberg = access published papers online IMS Journals and Publications March . 2014 IMS Bulletin . 3 Annals of Statistics: Peter Hall and Runze Li http://imstat.org/aos http://projecteuclid.org/aos Annals of Applied Statistics: Stephen Fienberg http://imstat.org/aoas IMS Members’ News http://projecteuclid.org/aoas Annals of Probability: Krzysztof Burdzy http://imstat.org/aop Peter Hall becomes Doctor Honoris Causa in the University of Cantabria, Spain http://projecteuclid.org/aop The University of Cantabria, Spain, organized a series of events throughout 2013 to commem- Annals of Applied Probability: Timo Seppäläinen orate the International Year of Statistics, including a lecture series in the fall, a forthcoming http://imstat.org/aap http://projecteuclid.org/aoap book dedicated to the dissemination of statistics and its applications, and the elaboration of a Statistical Science: Peter Green series of video clips for the Spanish Statistical and Operational Research Society, SEIO. http://imstat.org/sts http://projecteuclid.org/ss To culminate these events, the University of Cantabria decided to award an honorary IMS Collections doctorate to Professor Peter Hall, University of Melbourne. Peter is well known within our http://imstat.org/publications/imscollections.htm community. Many of his more than 600 publications are among the most cited in the field. In http://projecteuclid.org/imsc addition, Peter was listed among the ten most cited scientists in Mathematics (in all reports IMS Monographs and IMS Textbooks: David Cox http://imstat.org/cup/ by in-cites, http://in-cites.com/scientists/, until they stopped