ISINewsletter 2009-3 (Sections)

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ISINewsletter 2009-3

Bernoulli Society for Mathematical Statistics and Probability

President's Report

First, I would like to warmly thank Jean Jacod for being President of the Bernoulli Society (BS) during the last two years and the Executive Committee and Council members whose terms have ended.

Part of my work as BS President-Elect was to promote a diagnosis process with the contribution of points of view and comments kindly provided by several members. Many strengths of the Society have been confirmed and we have also learned various problems that BS has had for several years; some of them are similar to those currently faced by other knowledge and professional societies, but some are BS weaknesses in particular. Part of this diagnosis includes what has already been pointed out by Arnoldo Frigessi in his Word from the Outgoing Scientific Secretary (Bernoulli News, Vol. 15, No. 2, 2008).

The forthcoming year’s agenda for the new BS Executive Committee and Council must be defined by the challenges and opportunities already detected. In addition to these, BS members are welcome and encouraged to make suggestions. The activities and initiatives should continue contributing towards the objectives of the Bernoulli Society, which are the advancement of the sciences of probability (including stochastic processes) and mathematical statistics and of their applications to all those aspects of human endeavor which are directed towards the increase of natural knowledge and the welfare of mankind.

In particular, as a Section of the ISI family, a natural question is the role that BS should continue playing within ISI and the expectations ISI and other ISI Sections currently have from BS, and vice versa. This requires continually seeking creative ways of collaboration, for which the new ISI Strategic Plan and the changes ISI has recently experienced provide a timely framework – a challenge itself for BS. It is also a very fortunate opportunity that two former BS Presidents are currently playing key roles in the ISI; Jef Teugels as President and Louis Chen as one of the Vice-Presidents.

The ISI World Statistics Congresses (formerly ISI Sessions) have always been an opportunity for part of the BS membership to make connections and professional friends in a worldwide and broader community of statisticians. For the 57^th ISI Session (Durban, South Africa, 16-22 August 2009), BS organized 13 Invited Paper Meetings in several topics of mathematical statistics and probability and of their applications. This included a wonderful and celebrated ISI-BS Tribute Session to David G. Kendall.

Some recent BS activities and news are reported below, in what is the first ISI Newsletter contribution by Nakahiro Yoshida, new Scientific Secretary of BS. We invite members of ISI and other ISI Sections to visit the BS web pages and to also read Bernoulli News to find out more about detailed reports on other meetings organized or sponsored by the Bernoulli Society as well as our publications, history, membership benefits, forthcoming meetings and recent initiatives.

Finally, I am looking forward to engage with Officers of the ISI and other ISI Sections regarding the future of the role of BS within ISI, as well as to consider reviewing and developing joint activities. The year 2013 marks the 300^th Anniversary of the publication of the Ars Conjectandi of Jacob Bernoulli. This is a wonderful and strategic opportunity to promote joint initiatives not only within ISI, but also with other societies. This celebration should include activities and introduce initiatives of common interest and go beyond what current professional and scientific societies have achieved. After all, we share – from different but complementary and needed points of view and purposes – a general interest which is the advancement of Statistics.

Victor Pérez-Abreu

Committee Members and Editors

The new Executive Committee:

The new Council Members 2009-2013:

They compose the Council together with ex officio members and the Council Members 2007-2011:

Chairs of currently active committees:
Conferences on Stochastic Processes and Their Applications - Marta Sanz-Solé (Barcelona, Spain)
Publications Committee - Michael Sørensen (Copenhagen, Denmark)

Regional Committee Chairs:
European - Aad van der Vaart (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
East-Asian and Pacific - Tim Brown (Canberra, Australia)
Latin America - José León (Caracas, Venezuela)

Editors:
Bernoulli - Holger Rootzén (Gothenburg, Sweden)
Stochastic Processes and Their Applications - Thomas Mikosch (Copenhagen, Denmark)
International Statistical Review - Ali Hadi (Cairo, Egypt)
Bernoulli News - Vicky Fasen (Munich, Germany) and Robert Stelzer (Munich, Germany)

Web Editor:
Bernoulli Society - Björn Böttcher (Dresden, Germany)

The 57^th Session of the ISI, 16-22 August 2009, Durban, South Africa

Bernoulli Society organized 13 invited paper meetings in several topics of mathematical statistics, probability and of their applications. One of these meetings was an ISI-BS Tribute Session to David G. Kendall. In this commemoration, David Kendall was remembered as being heavily involved in the formation of the Bernoulli Society and for contacting in 1974 a member of the Bernoulli family to request to allow the Society the use of elements of the Bernoulli family´s coat of arms. It also included talks on the perspective of David Kendall pioneering works on stochastic geometry and its applications, and the statistical theory of shape.

Recent and forthcoming events organized or sponsored by BS

8^th World Congress of the Bernoulli Society
(in conjunction with the 2012 IMS Annual Meeting)
9-14 July 2012, Istanbul, Turkey.

33^rd Conference on Stochastic Processes and their Applications (SPA)
27-31 July 2009, Berlin, Germany. 650 participants.
http://www.math.tu-berlin.de/SPA2009/

34^th Conference on Stochastic Processes and their Applications (SPA)
6-10 September 2010, Osaka, Japan
http://stokhos.shinshu-u.ac.jp/SPA2010/index.html

58^th ISI World Statistics Congress
21-26 August 2011, Dublin, Ireland
http://www.isi2011.ie/

XI CLAPEM - Latin American Congress in Probability and Mathematical Statistics
1-6 November 2009, Caracas, Venezuela
http://cipion.cesma.usb.ve/xiclapem/en/

27^th European Meeting of Statisticians (EMS)
20-24 July 2009, Toulouse, France
http://www.math.univ-toulouse.fr/EMS2009/4-17613-EMS2009.php

28^th European Meeting of Statisticians (EMS)
17-22 August 2010, Piraeus, Greece
http://stat.unipi.gr/ems2010

16^th European Young Statisticians Meeting (EYSM)
24-28 August 2009, Bucharest, Romania
http://www.eysm2009.ase.ro/

Publications of the Society

Official publications of the Society: Bernoulli Journal. From December 2009 on, Richard A. Davis will be the new Editor instead of Holger Rootzén. All registered Bernoulli Society members have free access to online versions of Bernoulli and a reduced rate for print copies.

Stochastic Processes and their Applications (SPA, an Elsevier Journal). The editorial board is appointed by BS. Maria Eulalia Vares was the Editor until March 2009 and Thomas Mikosch since then. Members have free access to online versions (back to 1973) and a reduced rate for print copies.

Bernoulli News. The Editors for 2007-2009 have been Eric Cator and Erik van Zwet, and the Editors for 2009-2011 are Vicky Fasen and Robert Stelzer.

The Society also co-publishes, on equal footing, with the IMS, the following electronic journals that have with open access:
Probability Surveys
Statistics Surveys
Electronic Journal of Probability
Electronic Journal of Statistics
Electronics Communications in Probability

In addition, BS will collaborate on the Encyclopedia of Probability and Statistics, which will be published by Springer Verlag under the scientific supervision of a number of scientific societies, including ISI itself.

The activities in the domain of publications are taken care of by the BS Publications Committee, which appoints the main Editor(s) of each journal, jointly with the IMS for the joint publications.

The 28^th European Meeting of Statisticians (EMS 2010)

The European Meetings of Statisticians have already been established among the major international meetings covering a broad area of disciplines, such as mathematical statistics, biostatistics, computational statistics, financial statistics, probability and applied probability. The Meetings are held under the auspices of the Bernoulli Society for Mathematical Statistics and Probability, the IMS and ISI.
The 28^th European Meeting of Statisticians (EMS 2010) will be held from 17-22 August 2010 at the University of Piraeus in Greece.
The purpose of EMS 2010 is to provide a forum where researchers from universities throughout the world, as well as practitioners, can discuss current problems, new approaches and future directions in the field of Probability and Statistics. Young researchers and PhD students are especially invited to contribute papers.
The Scientific Programme Committee consists of Enno Mammen, University of Mannheim, Germany (Chair), Viktor Benes, Gerda Claeskens, Arnoldo Frigessi, Adam Jakubowski, Markos Koutras, Pascal Massart and Andy Wood. Chair of the Local Organising Committee is Markos Koutras. Further information is on the website: http://stat.unipi.gr/ems2010.

M.V. Koutras