IASC News March 2020

News from the IASC Executive Committee (February / March 2020)

The Russian public organization “Russian Association of Statisticians” (RASt – see http://www.rusasstat.ru/en/) invited me in my role as IASC President to Saint-Petersburg, Russian Federation, in early February 2020. I was asked to hold welcome addresses and introduce IASC at their congress on February 4, 2020, and at their consecutive “Data Science: International Scientific and Practice Conference” on February 5, 2020. In addition to several discussions with Alexey Ponomarenko, the RASt Chairman, I interacted with several members of their Executive Board, but also was asked to hold a career overview lecture for interested graduate and undergraduate students. RASt is highly interested in Computational Statistics and Data Science. A Memorandum of Understanding between IASC and RASt is under preparation and possible future joint activities are under consideration. If you are personally interested to get more closely involved, please reach out to Alexey on the RASt side or to me on the IASC side.

Also, be aware of a relatively new type of scam: As an attendee of an upcoming conference, you may be contacted by phone (or e-mail) and someone is offering to help you making travel arrangements for you. This is some kind of scam where someone tries to obtain your credit card information. CompStat has posted this warning to their web page, but this scam is not limited to IASC/ISI conferences, but happened for other non-statistics conferences as well. Be careful!

Finally, look out for updates related to future conferences, workshops, and other IASC events. There have been numerous cancellations of conferences worldwide in the past few weeks and travel restrictions are in place for several regions and countries due to the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19). At this time, all IASC events will take place as scheduled, but it is impossible to predict future developments. Please look out for updates – and stay healthy! I hope we will see you at some of our upcoming conferences in Mexico City (Mexico), Durham (North Carolina, United States), or Bologna (Italy) this year.

 

Forthcoming Event: LACSC 2020 5th Latin American Conference on Statistical Computing

The 5th Latin American Conference on Statistical Computing (LACSC 2020) will be held in Ciudad de México, México, from June 9 to June 11, 2020. This international conference is jointly organized by the Department of Statistics and the Department of Industrial & Operations Engineering of the Instituto Autónomo de México (ITAM), the Latin American Regional Section of the International Association for Statistical Computing (LARS-IASC) and the International Statistical Institute (ISI). The theme of this year is “Statistical Computing for Intelligent Decision Making” and the Keynote Speakers,

  • Wendy L. Martínez, Bureau of Labor Statistics, USA
  • Daniel Russo, Columbia University, USA
  • Enrique Sucar, Inst. Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptima y Electrónica, México
  • Renato Assunção, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil
  • Antonietta Mira, Università della Svizzera Italiana, Switzerland

 

LACSC 2020 invites to submit papers, contributed paper sessions and invited paper sessions before March 20, 2020. The call of papers and all the information is available at http://lacsc2020.itam.mx

The aim of LACSC is to foster the progress of the theory, methods and practice of statistical computing in Latin America, and to become the main meeting point of the statistical computing scientific community in LA. This year, the call of papers of the conference gives an account of the interest of academics, scientists and professionals in methodological aspects of statistical computing and relevant applications for the Latin American community.

You cannot miss LACSC 2020! The Local Organizing Committee is also organizing an interesting social program. Mexico City is the capital of the United Mexican States (official name of the country). Originally this city was built on an islet where some natives found an eagle devouring a snake and was called Tenochtitlan. Chinampas for agriculture were built around it and became the capital of the Aztec Empire. With the arrival of the Spaniards in 1521, Mexico City fell under its dominance and became the center of the economic activity of the power of New Spain. Its outstanding colonial architecture earned it recognition as the City of Palaces. Currently, Mexico City stands in a valley surrounded by volcanoes, proud of its heritage, the product of the fusion of two cultures. It is the largest and most populous city in Latin America and one of the most dynamic capitals in the world; It has a large number of museums, theaters, concert halls, archaeological ruins, theme parks and recreational parks. Also, it offers a great gastronomic variety typical of all regions of Mexico and the world. Please see more information on the following links: https://www.visitmexico.com/en/ and https://www.lonelyplanet.com/mexico/mexico-city

 

Forthcoming Event: 3rd LARS-IASC School on Computational Statistics and Data Science

The Third LARS-IASC School on Computational Statistics and Data Science will be held in Ciudad de México, México, from June 7 to June 8, 2020. This is a satellite event of the 5th Latin American Conference on Statistical Computing, LACSC 2020, jointly organized by the Instituto Autónomo de México (ITAM), the Latin American Regional Section of the International Association for Statistical Computing (LARS-IASC) and the International Statistical Institute (ISI).

This year the school theme is Stochastic Simulation and Reinforcement Learning (http://lacsc2020.itam.mx) and the instructors,

  • Enrique Sucar, Inst. Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica, México
    • “Probabilistic Graphical Models: Principles and Applications”
  • David Muñoz-Negrón, Instituto Tecnológico de México (ITAM)
    • “Stochastic Simulation: Output Analysis and Applications”
  • Eduardo F. Morales, Inst. Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica, México
    • “Reinforcement Learning”

The main purpose of the school is to spread the knowledge base and advances in Statistical Computing in Latin American countries and to increase the quantity of researchers and data scientists in the field. The program is organized around three axes: knowledge base and advances, software and data science applications and it is oriented to postgraduate students, researchers and practitioners in statistics and data science.  For LARS-IASC students, the IASC will provide (a) up to 10 scholarships – 100% waiver in registration fee for people living in developing countries (low income countries https://data.worldbank.org/income-level/low-income and lower middle income countries https://data.worldbank.org/income-level/lower-middle-income); (b) 1 full scholarship that includes registration fee, travel, and stay expenses.  To apply for these scholarships, the candidates must,

  • Be a member of the International Association for Statistical Computing (IASC). More information on how to become a member can be found here: https://iasc-isi.org/become-a-member/
  • At the time of the application and of the events be living and working/studying in a developing country.

ITAM’s mission is to contribute to the individual’s comprehensive education and to develop a freer, more just, and prosperous society. In order to achieve its research, teaching, and outgrowth endeavors, ITAM aims to reach the highest levels of academic excellence in an environment promoting the plurality of ideas and respectful of ethnic, cultural, and religious differences. Our institution’s goal is to prepare and educate women and men that are capable of acting in an informed, rational, responsible, critical way, and committed to creating, managing, and shaping public opinion, institutions, as well as further works. It also intends that these women and men be capable of creating and transmitting knowledge of the highest ethical, scientific, technological, and professional levels, allowing society to become aware of its problems and contributing to their understanding and solutions https://www.itam.mx/en

 

Past Event: LARS-IASC IPS on Computational Statistics XLV Meeting of the Chilean Society of Statistics

The XLV Chilean Meeting of the Chilean Society of Statistics was held from October 21 to 25 2019 in Puerto Varas, in southern Chile. This annual conference is the main meeting point of the Chilean community in statistics. The LARS-IASC and the Chilean Section for Statistical Computing (SCEC) organized an Invited Paper Session on Computational Statistics that considered the contributions of two speakers: Alba Martínez-Ruiz and Orietta Nicolis who presented the talks “Parallel statistical algorithms: Careful design and important decisions”, and “Deep learning methods for the prediction of self-exciting point processes”, respectively. The XLV meeting was organized by the Chilean Society of Statistics (SOCHE) and the Center for the Discovery of Structures in Complex Data based at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. The scientific program included 5 keynote speakers and contributions from the Chilean and Latin American scientific community (http://midas.mat.uc.cl/soche2019/).

 

Call for Papers: COMPSTAT 2020

The submission tool for COMPSTAT 2020 is now open at http://www.compstat2020.org/submission.php.

The conference will take place in Bologna from August, 25th to 28th 2020. Deadline for submissions is April 17th 2020.

As a satellite event of COMPSTAT 2020 the 1st CSDA & EcoSta Workshop on Statistical Data Science (SDS 2020) will take place at Bologna from   August 28th to 30th. It is associated with the new supplement of the journal Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, the Annals of Statistical Data Science (SDS). Further information on the satellite workshop and submission information can be found at http://www.compstat2020.org/SatelliteWorkshop.php

 

Call for Papers: DSSV 2020

The International Association for Statistical Computing and the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute are jointly sponsoring the 2020 conference on Data Science and Statistical Visualization (DSSV). It will take place on July 29-31 at the Convention Center in Durham, North Carolina, USA.

This conference will occur immediately before the Joint Statistical Meetings in Philadelphia on Aug. 2-6, for convenience of international travelers who wish to consolidate their meetings. Those travelers may want to purchase roundtrip tickets from their homes to Philadelphia, and then from Philadelphia to the Raleigh-Durham airport.

The plenary speakers for the DSSV conference are David Dunson, Bobby Gramacy, Cynthia Rudin, and Ming Yuan. More information about the conference and related activities is posted on the website https://www.samsi.info/programs-and-activities/research-workshops/2020-data-science-statistics-and-visualisation-conference-july-29-31-2020/ People who wish to speak or present a poster should send email to dssv2020@samsi.info. Also, if you have questions, please send email to the same address.

 

DOWNLOAD: 2020-03_IASC