Liz Schiferl, The Lubrizol Corporation

This past year was filled with many activities for SPES members. I just returned from the Fall Technical Conference (FTC) in Richmond, Virginia. This conference reflects so much of what I value about SPES: focus on applications in a more intimate setting that results in a friendly and educational conference. We also heard a great speech by Ron Wasserstein; I was impressed with all the things he is getting the ASA involved in.

Thanks to Dave Edwards, general conference chair, and Willis Jensen and Zhen Wang, our steering and program committee representatives. Next year, Wang will chair the program committee, and it is already time to submit abstracts for the 2015 conference, which will be held in Houston, Texas.

Also, look for an exciting new SPES-sponsored event at FTC to begin at 3:30 p.m. on the Friday of the conference. We plan on having refreshments. The format will be a panel and audience discussion. The 2015 topic is “Success and the Statistician.” Each panel member will give their view of how they define success (e.g., technical, personal, financial, influence, fulfillment) and how they have achieved success along their career path. Panel members will be leaders in academia, consulting, software, management (statistics), and management (non-statistician positions). This will be followed by discussion and Q&A, so we encourage the audience to thoroughly pick the brains of the panel members. Spread the word, especially to those just starting a career in statistics. The session should be as much fun as it is informative.

My trip to Richmond came on the heels of a trip to Boston, Massachusetts, for JSM. Thanks to Jim Wendelberger, program chair, for his work on the program. In addition to sessions and roundtables, the joint SPES/Q&P mixer is always a highlight of the Joint Statistical Meetings. Awards were given for presentations made at JSM 2014: Thomas Santner (The Ohio State University) won the Outstanding Presentation Award; Matthew Avery (Institute for Defense Analyses) was runner-up. The 2014 Statistics in Chemistry Award was presented to Greg Piepel, Aimme Holmes, Alejandro Herendia-Langner, Kearn Lee, and Steve Kelly for “Relationships Based on Scaled Tank Mixing and Transfer Test Results.” Almost everyone who attended the mixer won something due to the large number of door prizes given by donors!

Several SPES members joined the rank of ASA Fellow at JSM. Congratulations to Phil Scinto (SPES sponsored), Lisa Moore, Martha Gardner, Stefan Steiner, Tim Robinson, and Dave Trindade!

While I was not able to attend the Spring Research Conference, the ASA Q&P Section’s Quality and Productivity Research Conference combined with SPES to create a Joint Research Conference (JRC) this year with the theme “Statistics and Quality in a Data Rich World.” The event was held in Seattle, Washington, in June and hosted by the University of Washington. Thanks to Peter Qian, our SPES representative, for all his work. In 2015, P&G will host the meetings, which will be held in Cincinnati, Ohio, May 20–22. Co-chairs are William Brenneman and William Myers.

The Statistics in Chemistry Award has been a SPES-sponsored award for many years. Next year, the scope of this award will be expanded to recognize outstanding collaborative endeavors between statisticians and scientists throughout the physical and engineering sciences. The revised award will be called the Statistics in the Physical and Engineering Sciences Award or, more concisely, the SPES Award. Thanks to Rick Lewis for his efforts to manage this award.

SPES also serves its members by sponsoring webinars and short courses in conjunction with conferences. This year, SPES sponsored two short courses at JSM: Modern Design of Factorial Experiments, taught by Peter Goos and Bradley Jones, and The Design and Analysis of Experiments That Use Computer Simulators, taught by Thomas Santner and Brian Williams. At the Fall Technical Conference, SPES sponsored Text Mining and Unstructured Data Analysis Methods, taught by Heath Rushing. And look for a webinar on data mining in the near future. We are trying to do a better job of offering courses that meet members’ needs by doing brief online surveys. Please help us by responding to these surveys or contact the SPES continuing education chair, Byran Smucker at smuckerb@miamioh.edu.

My year as SPES chair has been challenging. Even though I have held many positions within SPES, I never realized just how much gets done throughout the year and how impossible it would be without all of the many volunteers. It’s amazing how much can be done when everyone does their part—and how much fun it can be. Additional thanks to Angela Dean and Winson Tamm for their advice as past chairs, Stephanie DeHart (chair in 2015) for knowing what is going on with all the other sections, Michael Crotty for coordinating the award activities, Pete Hovey for keeping track of the details and dollars, Phil Scinto for taking such awesome notes at those long Council of Sections meetings, and Matthew Pratola for his lovely reminders of when to send in an item for Amstat News.

If any of the activities or topics mentioned here looks interesting to you, perhaps you belong in SPES. Visit the website for more information.

Spring Research Conference (SRC 2015)

Byran Smucker, SPES Education Chair

The 22nd ASA/IMS Spring Research Conference (SRC 2015) on Statistics in Industry and Technology will be hosted by Procter & Gamble and held in Cincinnati, Ohio, at the Hyatt Regency May 20–22, 2015. The theme of this year’s conference is “Bridging Statistics Research and Application to Foster Innovation,” with topics including the design and analysis of experiments, computer experiments, Big Data, quality improvement and control, measurement systems, consumer research, statistical computing and applications to consumer products, the Air Force, and industry and government. Keynote speakers include Vijay Nair of the University of Michigan and Sallie Keller of Virginia Tech. The SRC promotes cross-disciplinary research in statistical methods and collaboration between researchers and practitioners.

We encourage you to submit a contributed talk to the conference by sending in a title and abstract via the SRC 2015 website. The deadline for submission is April 1, 2015. A number of $600 scholarships will be available to selected student and early-career presenters. For registration and all other information, visit the website or contact the contributed program chair, Byran Smucker, at smuckerb@miamioh.edu.

FTC Call for Papers

Zhen Wang, SPES FTC Program Chair

We invite you to submit papers for presentation to the 59th Fall Technical Conference, to be held October 8–9, 2015, in Houston, Texas. The Fall Technical Conference has long been a forum for both statistics and quality and is cosponsored by the American Society for Quality (Chemical and Process Industries Division and Statistics Division) and American Statistical Association (Section on Physical and Engineering Sciences and Section on Quality and Productivity). The goal of the conference is to engage researchers and practitioners in a dialogue that leads to more effective use of statistics to improve quality and foster innovation.

If you are interested in presenting an applied or expository paper in any of three parallel sessions (statistics, quality control, or tutorial/case studies), contact any of the committee members listed in the sidebar, preferably by email. Work should be strongly justified by application to a problem in engineering, manufacturing, Big Data, process/chemical industry, physical sciences, or a service industry. The mathematical level of the papers may range from basic to that of the Journal of Quality Technology or Technometrics. Please note which level of audience is targeted (introductory, intermediate, or advanced) so the committee can assign papers appropriately and plan a balanced program. Abstract submissions are due February 28, 2015.

Please follow the abstract format attached as a PDF. Papers are selected based on subject matter, technical correctness, usefulness, interest, clarity, and readability.