1. HAPPY NEW YEAR to all!

2. TOTAL SURVEY ERROR WORKSHOP, to be held in Washington on March 17-18, 2005. You will receive a "targeted" announcement about this workshop later this week. Information and on-line registration are available on the affiliates web site, at

http://www.niss.org/affiliates/totalsurveyerrorworkshop200503/main.html

3. AJL REMINDER. Send material for the Affiliates Job Listings to Katherine Kantner (kak@niss.org). The AJL is located on the NISS web site at

http://www.niss.org/affiliates/ajls.html

4. 2005 AFFILIATES EVENTS. The following list is only partially complete:

- SAMSI Data Assimilation Kickoff Workshop (1/23-26/05, RTP)

- SAMSI Computational Biology Workshop (1/31-2/1/05, NISS/SAMSI). This event is open only to program participants and affiliates.

- SAMSI Undergraduate Workshop (2/18-19/05, NISS/SAMSI)

- SAMSI Workshop: Data Assimilation--Issues, Challenges and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2/22-25/05, Los Angeles; hosted and co-sponsored by IPAM)

- Affiliates Problem Day (3/3/05, NISS)

- Affiliates Planning Meeting (3/4/05, NISS)

- Workshop: Total Survey Error (3/17-18/05, Washington)

- Workshop: Overarching Issues in Risk Assessment (4/28-30/05, Ames, IA; hosted and co-sponsored by Iowa State University)

- Workshop: Latent Variable Models and Survey Data for Social and Health Sciences Research (5/4-6/05, Montreal; hosted and co-sponsored by the Canadian National Program on Complex Data Structures)

- SAMSI LVSS Closing Workshop (5/19-21/05, RTP)

- SAMSI CompBio Closing Workshop (5/22-24/05, RTP)

- SAMSI Data Assimilation Summer School (6/12-23/05, Boulder, CO; hosted and co-sponsored by NCAR)

- Workshop: Statistical Disclosure Limitation for Geospatial Data (Spring 2005, NISS)

- Technology Day: Metabolomics (Spring 2005, NISS)

- JSM Affiliates Meeting (8/7/05, Minneapolis)

- SAMSI NDHS Kickoff Workshop (9/11-14/05, RTP)

- SAMSI Financial Mathematics, Statistics and Econometrics Kickoff Workshop (9/17-20/05, RTP)

Affiliates reimbursement accounts may used to attend all of these events.

5. 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

In particular, there is a unique opportunity for a postdoctoral fellow to join the NSF-funded NISS project "Dynamics for Social Networks Processes: Comparing Statistical Models with Intelligent Agents."

5. SAMSI PROGRAMS FOR 2005-06. SAMSI will conduct 2005-06 programs on

- Astrostatistics (Spring, 2006). See

http://www.samsi.info/200506/astro/astro-home.html

- Financial Mathematics, Statistics and Econometrics (entire year). See

http://www.samsi.info/200506/fmse/fmse-home.html

- National Defense and Homeland Security (entire year). See

http://www.samsi.info/200506/ndhs/ndhs-home.html

Opportunities for participation are available for those at all career stages.