IISA and ISPS Joint Conference
K. S. Rao, Local Organizing Committee Chair; S. Rao Jammalamadaka, International Organizing Committee Chair; Sastry Pantula, ASA President; R. C. Tiwari, International Indian Statistical Association President
The focus was on younger statisticians during the International Indian Statistical Association (IISA) conference that took place January 4–8 at Andhra University in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India. J. L. Narayana made a passionate plea for appropriate critical thinking and statistical training for the next decade, a theme that was repeated in sessions such as “Some Emerging Issues in Clinical Trials,” “Accelerating Pharmaceutical Development,” “Use of Statistics in the Pharmaceutical Industry,” “Statistics in Agriculture,” and “Statistics as a Profession.” ASA members who attended included ASA President Sastry Pantula, ASA Executive Director Ron Wasserstein, and ASA Past Vice President Bob Rodriguez.
In all, 512 people, including 30 students, attended the conference. There were six plenary sessions, 48 special invited sessions, 39 invited sessions (contributed paper sessions), and four sessions on student paper competitions. Plenary speakers were C. R. Rao, S. R. S. Varadhan, S. Rao Jammalamadaka, Robert Elston, J. L. Narayana, and B. L. S. Prakasa Rao.
There were also competitions for the Nair Young Statistician Award and MS Project Presentation Award. Young researcher awards went to P. G. Sankaran of Cochin University of Science and Technology and Ranjan Maitra of Iowa State University. Best student paper presentation awards were given to Rejeesh John of Cochin University of Science and Technology and C. L. Usha of Al-Ameer College of Engineering and IT, Vizag. Also recognized were N. Balakrishnan and Kirti Shah for their service to IISA and J. K. Ghosh, who received the IISA Life-Time Achievement Award.
C. R. Rao, Jammalamadaka, Narayana, Pantula, P. Rajasekhar Reddy, and R. C. Tiwari were honored in a special ceremony. Click here to view photographs.
The next IISA conference will be held April 21–24, 2011, at North Carolina State University. For more information or to offer suggestions, contact Ghosh at ghosh@stat.ncsu.edu.
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