A SAMSI Update

David Banks, SAMSI Director

The Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute (SAMSI) is one of six mathematics institutes supported by the National Science Foundation and the only one with a special responsibility for statistics. Next year, SAMSI is up for renewal in an open competition that will include all previous and current institutes, plus newcomers. It will be arduous.

This challenge has led SAMSI to undertake a number of new initiatives for what I hope will be the next phase of its life. Some of the major changes are the following:

• We shall move away from year-long research programs and toward semester-long programs. SAMSI has been good at starting conversations that eventually lead to papers, books, and valuable software. But collaborative research can take a long time to bear fruit, so it seems best to start many research threads and let them spin out in their own time, rather than trying to force a finish in nine months.
• For the first time, it seems SAMSI has a serious chance to move onto a college campus. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) wants to house us, and there is an active discussion of ways and means. Parking will be a problem, but we think the academic environment will bring fresh energy and attract more visitors.
• We plan to grow. Several other universities besides Duke, North Carolina State University, and UNC are exploring the possibility of joining as full partners.
• If SAMSI were being established now, we think data science and machine learning would be part of the intellectual cocktail. For this reason, we are bringing in computer science as a third core discipline, in addition to statistics and applied mathematics, and the overlap in the Venn diagram is what we call data science.

I think it is essential for our profession that at least one of the institutes in the next generation have statistics as a significant focus, so I ask for help from the broad statistical community. Specifically, I hope the following:

• Readers of this update will plan to participate in a SAMSI program. For academics, this means looking ahead to sabbatical years and reaching out to SAMSI to find programs that align with their interests. (SAMSI’s reimbursement policy for long-term visitors ensures that participation in a SAMSI program is essentially cost-neutral.)
• Readers who are not academics should consider encouraging their companies to join the new SAMSI Industry Associates program. The price tag is $10k/year. Government agencies may also join; and will receive similar benefits.

We are in the process of lining up future programs and need strong vision and leadership from the community. If you have an idea for a research program you would like to help lead, please email me at dbanks@samsi.info. All I need to start are three sentences describing the idea and a short (diverse) list of people who would probably be willing to participate, if the timing worked out for them.

SAMSI began in 2002 and has been a fulcrum for the statistical community, enabling us to move the world. I ask for broad community support to ensure SAMSI can continue to empower our field.