In 2017, the ASA Q&P Section’s Quality and Productivity Research Conference (QPRC) will be hosted by the University of Connecticut and held in Storrs from June 13–15. The theme of this year’s conference is “Quality and Statistics: A Path to Better Life.”

The goal of the conference is to stimulate interdisciplinary research among statisticians, scientists, and engineers in quality and productivity; industrial needs; and the physical, engineering, and health sciences. Statistical issues and research approaches drawn from collaborative research will be highlighted. A poster session will display graduate and undergraduate student research on these topics.

The conference will honor Shelemyahu Zacks of SUNY Binghamton, a prominent researcher in the fields of quality, reliability, and industrial statistics.

Conference registration covers all meals, including a banquet and a tour and reception at one of several high-tech research labs in the Storrs area.

For a small additional fee, a short course titled “Computational Bayesian Methods for Big Data Problems” will be given June 12 by Steve Scott, director of statistics research at Google.

An important objective of the QPRC is to encourage student participation. Scholarships include the Mary G. and Joseph Natrella Scholarship and QPRC student scholarships. Additionally, QPRC 2017 received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to present travel awards to graduate and undergraduate students from U.S. academic institutions who plan to present their research at the conference. A special effort will be made to support women and participants from under-represented groups.

The deadline for submitting a contributed paper is April 1.

The conference website contains information about the program, registration, student and Natrella scholarships, paper and poster submissions, and hotel and dorm reservations. The website also provides links to previous QPRC conferences.

Register early—on or before April 15—to receive a substantial discount.

For further information, contact Nalini Ravishanker or Haim Bar.