This award supports participation in the 16th New Researchers Conference, a conference series organized by, and held for, junior researchers under the auspices of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS). The meeting will take place over three days, July 31 to August 2, 2014, at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The primary objective is to provide a much needed venue for interaction among new researchers in statistics and probability. The meeting will be held immediately preceding the Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) 2014 in Boston, Massachusetts. Participants will have received their Ph.D. within the past five years or are expecting to receive their degree within the same year. Each participant will present a short expository talk and a poster. Topics will cover a variety of areas in statistics and probability, from theory and methods to applications. Senior speakers will give plenary talks for inspiration and take part in four discussion panels covering topics of importance for young people embarking on an academic/research career: teaching, mentoring, publishing and funding.
This conference series is explicitly aimed at training the future leaders and workers in statistics and probability. In helping to create networks of new researchers, it lays the groundwork for future collaboration and informal exchange of ideas and knowledge. It is also critical for building professional cohesion within the fields of statistics and probability and setting new frontiers for research. Meeting people outside of one's research specialty area, and learning about their research, favors a more comprehensive view of research, which is important when taking editor positions and other professional service activities. The conference attracts participants with different backgrounds and nationalities, and underrepresented groups (women, minorities and people with disabilities) are explicitly encouraged to attend. The conference website is available at www.stat.harvard.edu/NRC2014/.
The 16th Meeting of New Researchers in Statistics and Probability took place at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from July 31 – August 2, 2014, just prior to the Joint Statistical Meetings, which took place in downtown Boston. The primary objective was to provide a much needed platform for interaction among new researchers in the field of probability and statistics. The meeting attracted young statisticians and probabilists from many areas of expertise. In total, 48 young researchers participated in the conference: 17 women and 31 men from the United States, Canada, China, France, India, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, Portugal, Serbia, South Africa, Spain, and Taiwan. The first two days of the meeting were tightly filled with talks and posters by the new researchers, and invited lectures by very well-known senior researchers. All the participants were given the opportunity to present a 5 minutes spotlight talk, in addition to presenting a poster. The topics included mathematical statistics, biostatistics, high-dimensional issues, spatio-temporal modeling, and survey sampling. All sessions were very well attended. The meeting also recognized a young researcher, Ying Hung, with the Tweedie Award. There were four discussion panels on the major aspects of research and academic careers, including publishing, funding, leadership, and data science. The conference aided in general professional development for new researchers in statistics and probability. The participants were able to learn what other people at similar stages of their career are researching which is useful in broadening their views on the current trends in statistics and probability. The meeting helped create a network of new researchers, laying the groundwork for future collaboration and informal exchange of ideas and knowledge. More details about the meeting as well as photographs can be found at www.stat.harvard.edu/NRC2014/.
