Invited Session Proposals Sought for JSM 2020

David Banks, JSM 2020 Program Chair

Hi, folks! This is simple. It is time to start planning the 2020 Joint Statistical Meetings. To that end, the 2020 Program Committee is soliciting proposals for invited sessions. (And in a few months, we shall be soliciting proposals for topic-contributed sessions, and later on, asking for invited posters, contributed posters, and contributed talks.)

Invited Paper and Panel Sessions

The process for submitting a proposal is straightforward. For the standard invited session, there are usually three speakers and perhaps a discussant, and the session has unity of theme. For the standard panel, you will have perhaps five to seven speakers who collectively address some interesting topic. JSM usually has many more standard sessions than panel sessions.

Once you have chosen your participants, identify up to three sponsors. You will provide a ranked list of these sponsors when you submit your session proposal online. A sponsor can be an ASA section, an interest group, an affiliated society (e.g., IMS, ENAR, SSC, etc.) or perhaps a journal. It is probably smart to have a short conversation with the section program chair, interest group chair, program committee representative from the affiliated society, or the relevant journal editor to ensure your proposal aligns with the goals of those groups. You can find most of these people on the JSM Program Committee list (see below). The list will be on the 2020 JSM website when it goes live at the end of this month.

When you submit a proposal, you will need to provide a title, a few sentences describing the session, and a list of speakers with their affiliations and the titles of their talks. If your speakers can provide abstracts, that is even better. Titles and abstracts may be changed later, so these are not binding. But the more detail you can provide, the more serious your proposal appears.

The competition for invited session slots is intense. My advice is that a strong proposal has diverse speakers: gender balance is good, and so is having a mix of seniority (e.g., a new researcher or practitioner, a mid-career person, and someone who is clearly senior). Topicality is also important; a fresh session that addresses new ideas, applications, or theory is much more attractive than one rehashing settled science. And if your topic aligns with the ASA president’s theme, that carries weight. Wendy Martinez has chosen the theme “Everyone Counts: Data for the Public Good.”

Most invited sessions are sponsored by ASA sections. Each section gets at least one guaranteed invited session, which is selected by the section’s program chair. But proposals that are not chosen for the guaranteed slot then go into an open competition in which the JSM Program Committee decides which ones will be chosen for the limited number of invited sessions.

The open competition is very much a crapshoot. The Program Committee does not just weigh the merits of a proposal, but also seeks balance across fields, diversity, and crowd appeal.

Memorial Sessions

There are five open slots for memorial sessions at JSM 2020. One strategy to maximize your chance of obtaining an invited memorial session is to first submit your proposal as a regular invited session. You may pick “memorial session” as the sponsor. But also pick sections as sponsors. If one of the sections picks up your proposal as one of its guaranteed sessions, then you are done. If not, your proposal might still be selected in the open competition for invited sessions. If that fails, your proposal will automatically compete for one of the five designated invited memorial session slots.

Invited Poster Sessions

The Opening Mixer at JSM 2020 will have up to 30 invited electronic posters on display. Please send your idea (or the poster itself) to the JSM 2020 Poster Chair.

Introductory Overview Lectures

We want to have four Introductory Overview Lectures (IOLs). These should address hot and significant statistical topics that will interest a broad swath of JSM attendees. The one or two speakers in an IOL should be engaging and capable of communicating complexity clearly. Note that IOL speakers may violate the one-talk rule; they may also present in an invited, topic-contributed, or contributed session. Please email the program chair with suggestions for topics and speakers.

Dates and Details

Invited session proposals may be submitted through the JSM online system between July 17 and September 5 at 11:59 p.m. ET. Decisions about the invited program will be made by the end of September.

I have been going to JSM for 35 years. It is my favorite meeting, with some of my favorite people. I hope all of you will help me make 2020 the best JSM we have ever had.

JSM 2020 PROGRAM COMMITTEE

JSM 2020 Program Chair
David Banks
Duke University

International Biometric Society (ENAR)
Jeremy Gaskins
University of Louisville

International Biometric Society (WNAR)
Dongseok Choi
Oregon Health & Science University

Institute of Mathematical Statistics (Invited)
Harrison H. Zhou
Yale University

Institute of Mathematical Statistics (Contributed)
Adityanand Guntuboyina
University of California, Berkeley

Statistical Society of Canada (SSC)
Ying Zhang
Acadia University

International Chinese Statistical Association (ICSA)
Xuming He
University of Michigan

International Indian Statistical Association (IISA)
Veera Baladandayuthapani
University of Michigan

Korean International Statistical Society (KISS)
Dongjun Chung
Medical University of South Carolina

International Society of Bayesian Analysis (ISBA)
Babak Shahbaba
University of California, Irvine

Royal Statistical Society (RSS)
TBD

International Statistics Institute (ISI)
TBD

Casualty Actuarial Society
Rick Gorvett
Bryant University

Leadership Support Council, ASA
Jack Miller
University of Michigan

Associate Chair, ASA
Julie Novak
Netflix

Associate Chair, ASA
Michelle Dunn
NSA

Invited and Contributed Posters
TBD

Section on Bayesian Statistical Science, ASA
Surya Tapas Tokdar
Duke University

Biometrics Section, ASA
Samrachana Adhikari
New York University

Biopharmaceutical Section, ASA
Stephine L. Keeton
PPD, Inc.

Business and Economic Statistics Section, ASA
Mariana Saenz-Ayala
Harder + Company Community Research

Section on Statistics in Genomics and Genetics, ASA
Qiongshi Lu
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Government Statistics Section, ASA
Michael Yang
NORC

Health Policy Statistics Section, ASA
Lisa M. Lix

Section on Medical Devices and Diagnostics, ASA
Tyson Rogers
NAMSA

Mental Health Statistics Section, ASA
Knashawn Morales
University of Pennsylvania

Section on Nonparametric Statistics, ASA
Yanyuan Ma
The Pennsylvania State University

Section on Physical and Engineering Sciences, ASA
Mary Frances Dorn
Los Alamos National Laboratory

Quality and Productivity Section, ASA
Terri Henderson
Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, Inc.

Section on Risk Analysis, ASA
Qian Li
FDA

Social Statistics Section, ASA
Antje Kirchner

Section on Statistical Computing, ASA
Matthias Schonlau
University of Waterloo

Section on Statistical Consulting, ASA
Summer Han
Stanford University

Section on Statistics and Data Science Education, ASA
Amelia McNamara
University of St. Thomas

Section on Statistical Graphics, ASA
Shailaja Suryawanshi
Merck & Co., Inc.

Section on Statistics in Imaging, ASA
Linglong Kong
University of Alberta

Section on Statistical Learning and Data Science, ASA
Adam Rothman
University of Minnesota

Section for Statistical Programmers and Analysts, ASA
Navneet Hakhu
Axio Research

Section on Statistics and the Environment, ASA
Ephraim Hanks
The Pennsylvania State University

Section on Statistics in Defense and National Security, ASA
Karl Pazdernik
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Section on Statistics in Epidemiology, ASA
Alisa Stephens-Shields
University of Pennsylvania

Section on Statistics in Marketing, ASA
Daniel McCarthy
Emory University

Section on Statistics in Sports, ASA
Sarah Morris
Datalys Center

Survey Research Methods Section, ASA
Yang Cheng
US Census Bureau

Section on Teaching of Statistics in the Health Sciences
Maria Ciarleglio
Yale University

Lifetime Data Science Section, ASA
Zhezhen Jin
Columbia University