Home » Member News, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Section News

Physical and Engineering Sciences Message from Incoming Chair

2 January 2019 591 views No Comment
Byran Smucker

    The Section on Physical and Engineering Sciences (SPES) is one of the oldest ASA sections, but there is a need to continually evaluate the mission, objectives, and strategies to serve our membership faithfully and effectively. If you are a member of SPES, I encourage you to review our charter and provide feedback regarding parts you affirm and elements that should be modified or jettisoned.

    In the same spirit, here are a couple of ideas I will be thinking about over the next year.

    First, I hope SPES expands support for big data tools and methods within our community. Though we will continue to maintain a strong presence in the traditional areas of importance to our membership, there are many applications in industrial statistics, the physical sciences, and engineering that require the use of large-scale data analysis methods.

    The Spring Research Conference is an example of a SPES-sponsored institution that has evolved productively in this area. A recent announcement for the 2019 SRC at Virginia Tech in May included the following: “Although historically emphasizing industrial statistics, design, quality, and reliability, increasingly the meeting emphasizes modern methods in learning and high-performance computing in statistical methodology, with diverse applications throughout the applied sciences.” I hope SPES can continue on this trajectory and equip our members with the skills they need to be successful in both traditional and emerging statistical areas.

    If you are interested in advancing ideas combining data science, machine learning, or big data methods with application areas of interest to the SPES community, please consider getting involved. For instance, you might plan a workshop that specifically connects big data or machine learning to industrial statistics and related areas, or you might organize an invited session at JSM or the Fall Technical Conference discussing how the SPES community can connect more strongly to these areas. Email me if you’d like to discuss your ideas.

    A second thought is about the Marquardt Memorial Industrial Speakers Program. This program provides funding for industrial statisticians to visit universities and discuss their work as industrial statisticians, as well as opportunities in the area. The program is not widely known or used by universities around the country. How can we improve the visibility of the program? What changes might be made to it so it can achieve its underlying objective: to promote industrial statistics and opportunities to the larger statistics community?

    An engaged membership is crucial for SPES. In addition to the SRC referenced above, SPES has an active presence at the Joint Statistical Meetings in Denver (the joint mixer being a highlight) and the Fall Technical Conference in late September at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Your involvement in these activities is desired and appreciated. I welcome any feedback or additional ideas and look forward to serving you in 2019.

    Call for SPES Award Nominations

    Ming Li, SPES Award Committee Chair

    The SPES Award is bestowed upon a distinguished individual or individuals based on their innovative use of statistics to solve a high-impact problem in the physical and engineering sciences. In odd-numbered years, the award is presented for a paper published in a refereed statistics, physics, chemistry, or engineering journal during the previous two years. Nominations are due by February 20. For more information, visit the webpage.

    2019 Spring Research Conference

    Robert Gramacy, SRC Organizing Committee

    Members of the 2019 SRC organizing committee (Bobby Gramacy, Yili Hong, and Xinwei Deng) and program committee (Bobby Gramacy, David Edwards, Ana Kupresanin, C. Devon Lin, Lu, Bill Myers, and Brian Reich) invite you to join them at the conference, which will take place at Virginia Tech May 22–24.

    The SRC is SPES’s annual meeting. Although it has historically emphasized industrial statistics, design, quality, and reliability, the meeting is increasingly emphasizing modern methods in learning and high-performance computing in statistical methodology, with diverse applications throughout the applied sciences.

    The invited program, including keynote presentations from David Banks of Duke/SAMSI and Christine Anderson-Cook of Los Alamos National Laboratory and a banquet talk by Oliver Schabenberger of SAS, is shaping up nicely. Details are available on the website.

    We have begun preparing our contributed program, including talks and posters. Contributed talks are really no different than invited talks, except the process is competitive, rather than curated by the program committee. Individuals wishing to contribute to the program should send a title and abstract to Robert Gramacy with “SRC 2019 Contribution” in the subject line. Contributed talks and posters will be entertained simultaneously, although you may indicate if you would prefer to not give a talk.

    Thanks to our sponsors, we are able to offer a limited number of student travel scholarships. If you wish to be considered for one, please also provide a short statement of interest in the meeting (e.g., how it would benefit your study), a CV/résumé, and a note from your adviser (on letterhead) confirming your student status and explaining the nature of your role in the research you are proposing to present at the meeting. All funded students must contribute a talk or poster, so this application for funding should be combined with the email described in the paragraph above.

    The deadline for contributing to the program and applying for a student travel scholarship is January 31.

    1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
    Loading...

    Comments are closed.