Affiliates Update: August 2004

1. 2005 IS THE YEAR OF THE AFFILIATE. As laid out in the NISS strategic vision, 2005 is the "Year of the Affiliate." The program will be five years old in March of 2005. While there is strong momentum in its membership and activities, this is a good time to take stock, and to ensure that the program continues to develop in the right directions. An initial presentation about "Year of the Affiliate" took place at the August 8 affiliates JSM lunch. It can be viewed or downloaded from the affiliates web site, at

http://www.niss.org/jsm04/jsmmeeting20040808.pdf

2. JSM AFFILIATES LUNCH. Representatives of more than 30 affiliates attended JSM 2004 Affiliates Lunch. A copy of Jim Berger's and my presentations is available on the affiliates web site, at

http://www.niss.org/jsm04/jsmmeeting20040808.pdf

A number of valuable suggestions were put forth. Among them was to move the total survey error workshop from Research Triangle Park to Washington, in order to allow more personnel Federal agency affiliates to attend. This has been done (see item 6 below), although the date has yet to be finalized.

3. 2004 SACKS AWARD. As many of you know already, the 2004 Jerome Sacks Award for Cross-Disciplinary Research was presented to Douglas W. Nychka of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) for "his outstanding contributions to the statistical sciences, both theory and practice, atmospheric science, climatology, environmetrics and the geosciences." For details, see

http://www.niss.org/sacksaward/sacksaward-recipient04.html

4. AFFILIATES PROPOSAL DEVELOPMENT FUND AWARD. One award has been made this year, to support a proposal entitled "Benchmarking Computational Models for Drug Discovery: Chemical Descriptors, Model Validation, and Model Applicability Criteria." Jacqueline Hughes-Oliver (Statistician, North Carolina State University) is PI; other senior participants are Yvonne Martin (Computational Chemist, Abbott Labs), Alex Tropsha (Computational Chemist, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and William Welch (Statistician, University of British Columbia).

5. SPAIG SESSION. I made a presentation about the affiliates programs at the JSM session "Statistical Partnerships between Academia and Industry Government" organized by Cynthia Z. F. Clark of the Census Bureau, which is available at

http://www.niss.org/jsm04/afkpresentation-clarksession.pdf

6. UPCOMING AFFILIATES EVENTS

7. REMINDERS

POSTDOCTORAL APPOINTMENTS
NISS has project needs and funds to make several postdoctoral appointments between now and next summer. Areas include digital government (data confidentiality, data integration and data quality), dynamics of social networks, education statistics, software engineering, statistical disclosure limitation for geospatial image data, and bioinformatics. Involvement with SAMSI programs is possible. Please make students and young colleagues aware of these wonderful opportunities. Information and a downloadable announcement are available on the NISS web site, at

http://www.niss.org/postdoc_info.html

SAMSI: Information about workshops and other activities at SAMSI during 2004-05 is at

http://www.samsi.info/200405/programs04-05.html