The Past, Present, and Future of Gibbs Sampling

描述（由申请人提供）：生物统计学家在生物医学和公共卫生数据的分析中发挥着不可或缺的作用，从研究设计阶段一直到最终分析和报告撰写。参加国际学术会议大大促进了初级生物统计学家的专业发展，因为他们提供了最好的机会来展示自己的研究，以及向该领域的高级研究人员学习和互动。此申请的主要目的是为8名初级生物统计研究者获得旅费支持，参加将于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）的第二次国际联合会议。会议的中心主题将是马尔可夫链蒙特卡罗（MCMC）及其相关方法和应用，特别是与癌症中的重要问题相关的方法和应用。该计划由三位国际知名的全体会议发言人主持，他们的部分旅费也得到了支持。此外，六个生物统计领域（分子生物学，空间和时空模型，生物信息学和遗传学，MCMC算法和软件，统计数据挖掘和现代非参数）的受邀会议将以理论和方法的混合为特色，与癌症或环境建模领域最密切相关。提供了组织委员会、全体会议发言人的详细资格和完整的暂定邀请计划。

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.