Travel Support for the 11th ISBA World Meeting on Bayesian Statistics

在这份申请中，PI要求支持国际贝叶斯分析学会（ISBA）世界会议，该会议将于2012年6月25日至29日在日本京都举行。会议的中心主题将是贝叶斯建模、贝叶斯理论和应用。应用范围将从生物学到金融到技术，特别侧重于挑战大规模问题。所寻求的资金用于支持初级研究人员的旅费，即攻读统计学、生物统计学、应用数学或密切相关领域的博士或博士学位的人员，或在会议召开前五年内获得此类学位的人员。这些研究人员所做的研究往往是最新颖、最有趣、对国际传播最重要的研究，但他们缺乏参加此类会议所需的旅费，因为他们还没有建立足以吸引外部旅行和其他工作经费的出版记录。会议的最佳论文（包括邀请和贡献的）将在ISBA的官方期刊《贝叶斯分析》（ba.stat.cmu.edu）上发表。将尽可能广泛地进一步散发与会议有关的材料，办法是将一些介绍资料登载在ISBA网站www.bayesian.org.Statisticians上。从研究设计阶段一直到最后分析和编写报告，在分析生物医学、环境、财务和公共卫生数据方面发挥不可或缺的作用。统计学家还在无数的科学审查和咨询小组中任职，并为实质性领域的研究人员提供统计培训和咨询。最后，发展新的统计方法来解释来自临床、观察和实验室研究的数据是统计努力的一个关键领域。因此，能够交流新思想的学术会议对统计科学的发展非常重要。国际会议——比如国际贝叶斯分析学会（ISBA）的世界会议——当然，由于规模和费用的原因，比较罕见，但它特别有益，因为与会者可以接触到通常在自己国家熟悉的期刊上看不到甚至读不到的想法和同事。初级统计研究人员参加这样的会议的好处和必要性特别大，因为这对他们的专业发展做出了巨大贡献，并有助于与更成熟的高级研究人员“公平竞争”。预计会议的好处包括促进统计理论和应用在工程、金融、技术、环境科学、生物医学等领域的持续发展，并探索经典统计方法和贝叶斯统计方法在特定研究领域的相互作用，特别强调大规模计算。将尽可能广泛地传播与会议有关的材料，刊登在ISBA的官方杂志《贝叶斯分析》上，该杂志可在ba.stat.cmu.edu网站上查阅，并在ISBA的网站www.bayesian.org上发布一些演讲。

In this application, the PI requests support for the World Meeting of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA), to be held in Kyoto, Japan, June 25-29, 2012. A central theme of the conference will be Bayesian modeling, Bayesian theory, and applications. The applications will range from biology to finance to technology, with specific focus on challenging large-scale problems. The funds sought are to support the travel expenses of junior investigators, i.e., persons pursuing a PhD or DrPH in statistics, biostatistics, applied mathematics, 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. Refereed versions of the conference's best papers (both invited and contributed) will be published in Bayesian Analysis, the official journal of ISBA (available online at ba.stat.cmu.edu). Further disseminatation of conference-related materials will be done as widely as possible, by posting some of the presentations on the ISBA web site at www.bayesian.org.Statisticians play an indispensable role in the analysis of biomedical, environmental, financial, and public health data, from the study design stage all the way through to final analysis and report-writing. Statisticians also serve on a myriad of scientific review and advisory panels, as well as provide statistical training and consulting to substantive area researchers. Finally, the development of new statistical methodology for interpretation of data from clinical, observational, and laboratory studies is a key area of statistical endeavor. As a result, scholarly conferences where new ideas can be exchanged are important for statistical science to move forward. International meetings -- like the World Meeting of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA) -- while of course rarer due to their size and expense, are particularly beneficial since they permit exposure to ideas and colleagues the attendee might not ordinary see or even read about in the familiar journals of one's own country. The benefit of and need for attendance at such meetings by junior statistical researchers is particularly great, since they contribute greatly to their professional development and help ``level the playing field'' with more established senior investigators. The anticipated benefits from the conference include promoting the continued development of statistical theory and applications in engineering, finance, technology, environmental science, biomedicine and other areas, and exploring the interplay of classical and Bayesian statistical methods in the context of specific areas of research, with particular emphasis on large-scale computation. Disseminatation of conference-related materials will be done as widely as possible, by publishing in "Bayesian Analysis", the official journal of ISBA available online at ba.stat.cmu.edu, and posting some of the presentations on the ISBA web site at www.bayesian.org.