Jun Zhu, ENVR Publications Chair; Amanda Hering and Bo Li, Workshop Co-Chairs; and Alix I. Gitelman, Committee Chair

From left: Three student poster competition winners, Ying Sun of Texas A&M University, Raphael Huser of Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, and Matthew Heaton of Duke University, stand with workshop co-chairs, Bo Li of Purdue University and Amanda Hering of Colorado School of Mines.

A workshop, Space-Time Statistics to Evaluate the Impacts of Climate on Health and Renewable Energy, was held October 14–16 at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

A short course given by Jim Zidek from the University of British Columbia was attended by nearly 40 participants. The course covered basic concepts in geostatistics, spatial sampling techniques, network design, and hierarchical modeling of space-time processes.

On the following two days, more than 65 people attended the workshop, which included 18 invited talks on climate change, spatial extremes, renewable energy, Bayesian spatial modeling, public health, and multivariate space-time processes. A poster session and reception were held together, during which more than 20 posters were displayed and three best student posters were chosen by the organizing committee.

Photos of the conference and presentations of many of the invited speakers have been posted on the conference website.

Call for JSM 2011 Topic-Contributed Sessions
The Joint Statistical Meetings will be held in Miami Beach, Florida, from July 30 to August 4, 2011. If you have ideas for topic-contributed sessions, contact ENVR Program Chair Devin Johnson at devin.johnson@noaa.gov.

2011 Student Paper Award

The Section on Statistics and the Environment (ENVR) is sponsoring a student paper competition on the topic of environmental statistics. We encourage students to submit papers on their research in this area. The paper may consist of novel approaches to the analysis of environmental data, new methodology with a clear application to an environmental statistical issue, or application of statistics to environmental problems. The selected winner will present his/her paper in a contributed session at the Joint Statistical Meetings in August of 2011 and receive a $1,000 stipend toward reimbursing the cost of attending JSM.

Anyone who is a student in the fall of 2010 (undergraduate, master’s, or PhD) is eligible to participate. The applicant must be the first author of the paper. In addition, a letter must be submitted that verifies the applicant’s student status from a faculty member familiar with the student’s work and, in the case of joint authorship, indicates what fraction of the contribution is attributable to the applicant. The applicant also must submit an abstract by February 1, 2011, to the ASA and request a presentation in an ENVR session. Applicants must follow all rules required for paper submission and attendance at JSM.

The paper must be entirely double-spaced (abstract, main body, references, footnotes, and appendices) and no longer than 26 pages (inclusive). Use at least 11-point type with at least 1-inch margins all around. Materials must be submitted electronically in Postscript or PDF format. All materials must be in English.

The deadline to submit materials is February 1, 2011, by 5 p.m. PST.

Papers will be reviewed by the Student Paper Competition Award Committee of the Section on Statistics and the Environment. Selection will be at the discretion of the committee and based on the innovation and significance of the contribution. Awards will be announced in early 2011. The decision of the selection committee will be final. This award will recognize an environmental statistics contribution with a certificate and recognition at the ASA ENVR section meeting during JSM.

If you have questions or would like application materials sent to you, email Alix I. Gitelman at gitelman@science.oregonstate.edu.