Travel support for the IMS-ISBA international conference

主要研究者请求支持将于2005年1月12日（星期三）至1月14日（星期五）在意大利博尔米奥举行的IMS（数理统计研究所）和ISBA（国际贝叶斯分析学会）第二次国际联合会议。 会议的一个中心主题将是马尔可夫链蒙特卡罗（MCMC）和相关的方法和应用在15年以来出版的Gelfand和史密斯（1990年，JASA），该文件介绍了这些方法的主流统计学家。所要求的资金用于支付美国机构初级统计调查员的差旅费，在统计学或密切相关领域攻读博士学位或博士学位的人员，或在会议前五年内获得此类学位的人员。这些调查人员所做的研究往往是最新颖、最有趣和最重要的研究，可在国际上传播，但却缺乏出席这种会议所需的旅费，因为他们尚未建立足以吸引外部旅费和其他工作经费的出版业绩记录，初级统计研究人员出席这种会议的好处和必要性特别大，因为他们对自己的专业发展作出了巨大贡献，并有助于与更成熟的高级调查员“建立公平的竞争环境”。会议的具体预期效益是：为研究人员提供一个深入讨论某一领域的机会，使他们有充分的时间就某一具体主题作专题介绍;激励青年研究人员在会议的重点领域进行研究，这些领域为跨学科合作提供了充分的机会;鼓励年轻的研究人员和学生在友好的小型会议环境中介绍他们的工作，与资深同事互动，并与同龄人接触;让来自代表性不足群体的大部分研究人员和学生参加会议，并提供与其他机构同事进行一对一讨论的机会;尽可能广泛地传播会议材料，将发言张贴在国际空间物体管理局的网站www.baidu.org上。

The principal investigator requested support for the Second international Joint Meeting of the IMS (Institute of Mathematical Statistics) and ISBA (the International Society for Bayesian Analysis), to be held in Bormio, Italy on Wednesday, January 12 to Friday, January 14, 2005. A central theme of the conference will be Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and related methods and applications in the 15 years since the publication of Gelfand and Smith (1990, JASA), the paper that introduced these methods to mainstream statisticians. The requested funding is to support the travel expenses of junior statistical investigators from US institutions, i.e., persons pursuing a PhD or DrPH in statistics or a closely related field, or who have received such a degree within the five years preceding the conference. Such investigators are often doing research that is among the most novel, interesting, and important for international dissemination, yet lack the travel funds necessary to attend such a conference, since they have not yet established a publication track record sufficient to attract external travel and other funding for their work.The benefit of and need for attendance at such meetings by junior statistical researchers is particularly great, since they contribute mightily to their professional development and help ``level the playing field'' with more established senior investigators. The specific anticipated benefits from the conference are: to provide an opportunity for researchers to discuss an area in some depth, by allowing ample time for presentations on a specific subject; to motivate young researchers to conduct research in the conference's focus areas that provide ample opportunity for interdisciplinary collaboration; to encourage young researchers and students to present their work, interact with senior colleagues, and make contact with their peers in a friendly, small meeting environment; to include a large portion of researchers and students from underrepresented groups among participants, and provide the opportunity for one-on-one discussions with colleagues from other institutions; to disseminate materials from the meeting as widely as possible, by posting the presentations on the ISBA web site at www.bayesian.org.