The Past, Present, and Future of Gibbs Sampling

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Biostatisticians play an indispensable role in the analysis of biomedical and public health data, from the study design stage all the way through to final analysis and report writing. The professional development of junior biostatisticians is greatly abetted by attendance at international scholarly conferences, since they afford the best opportunity for the presentation of one's own research, as well as learning from and interaction with the senior investigators in the field. This application's primary goal is to obtain travel support for 8 junior biostatistical investigators to attend 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, especially as related to important problems in cancer. The program is anchored by three internationally prominent plenary speakers for whom partial travel support is also sought. In addition, invited sessions in six biostatistical areas of interest (molecular biology, spatial and spatiotemporal models, bioinformatics and genetics, MCMC algorithms and software, statistical data mining, and modern nonparametrics) will feature a mixture of both theory and methods, most closely related to the fields of cancer or environmental modeling. Detailed qualifications of the organizing committee, plenary speakers, and a full tentative invited program are provided.