The 33rd NESS Symposium

Posted on Friday, May 17, 2019

The Department of Statistics of the University of Connecticut (UConn) is proud to host the 33rd New England Statistics Symposium (NESS) on May 15–17, 2019.

For more details regarding the 33rd symposium, please check https://symposium.nestat.org.

As an annual event, NESS has been bringing together statisticians from all over New England to a central location to share research, discuss emerging issues in the field, and network with colleagues since it was first started at UConn in 1987. After the establishment of the New England Statistical Society in 2017, we are proud to host the first remodeled NESS to bring NESS to a new level.

The symposium will be a 3-day event, featuring short-courses, plenary talks, invited sessions, career development panel discussion, student paper competition, student poster competition, statathon, and Chernoff Lecture. In addition to being a larger scale event, two new features are the stat-a-thon and the Chernoff Lecture.

Highlighted Updates

Registration and abstract submission open
Still accepting invited session proposals (until March 18)
Four short courses on Wednesday, May 15 open for registration
Two data challenges of Stat-a-thon released
Inaugural Chernoff Awardee to be revealed and give Chernoff Lecture on Friday, May 17
Tentative agenda online
Hotel reservation with special NESS rate open (until April 18 or soldout)
Flyers attached

Keynote Addresses

Sam Kou, PhD., Professor and Chair, Department of Statistics, Harvard University.
Amanda Stent / David Rosenberg, Researcher and Data Scientists, Bloomberg.

Banquet Presentation

Anthony D’Amico, MD., PhD., Eleanor Theresa Walters Distinguished Chair, Chief of Genitourinary Radiation Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Chair of the residency executive committee in the Harvard Radiation Oncology Program, and Advisory Dean and Chair of career advising and mentorship at Harvard Medical School.

Chernoff Award and Chernoff Lecture

The Chernoff Excellence in Statistics Awards is the most prestigious award bestowed by the NESS, given to an individual who, in the tradition of Herman Chernoff’s work, has made exceptional contributions to the theory, methodology, or novel applications to statistics and/or data science. The Award committee has selected the inaugural recipient of the Chernoff Award. The identity of the recipient will not be revealed to the public until the Chernoff Lecture on Friday, May 17, at the symposium in Hartford, CT.

Short courses

(Full-day) Intermediate Machine Learning: Key Concepts and Techniques, by Dr. David Rosenberg (Bloomberg)
(Full-day) Big data analytics and deep learning, by Dr. Ming Li (Amazon) and Dr. Hui Lin (Netlify)
(Half-day) Practical visualization for data scientists, by Dr. Xiaoyue Cheng (University of Nebraska at Omaha)
(Half-day) Introduction to Multilevel Modeling, by Dr. Min Zhu (SAS)

Registration

Registration is required for all participants of the conference. The registration fee covers conference materials, breakfasts, lunches and tea breaks. Members of the New England Statistical Society receive discounts in pricing. To register, please complete the on-line registration form at https://symposium.nestat.org/registration.php.

Abstract Submission

Valid conference registration (paid or free registration) is required for abstract submission. Please provide your receipt number of registration and abstract submission code in the confirmation email. For invited sessions, the invited session id is needed which is obtained from the session organizer. LaTeX formatting is permitted for all text entry fields. Submit at https://symposium.nestat.org/abstractform.php.

Call for Participation

Invited Sessions

We are calling for proposals for invited sessions. Please submit by Monday, March 18, 2019 at the link on our webpage. As we have a limited number of slots, earlier submission is appreciated.

Contributed Poster Session

Abstracts of contributed posters are to submitted by Monday, April 22. Acceptance may be restricted by the available spaces.

IBM Student Paper Competition

Students are encouraged to submit papers for consideration of 3 student paper awards sponsored by the IBM Watson Research Center. Manuscripts need to be received no later than Monday, April 1, 2019.

Student Poster Competition

Students are encouraged to submit posters to the student poster competition (with a sponsor to be named). Abstracts need to be submitted by Monday, April 22, 2019.

Statathon

Students are encouraged to compete in the Stat-a-thon, our exclusive brand name for an event similar to a hackathon but with more focus on statistics. Two data challenge have been released (statathon.stat.uconn.edu). Individuals looking to be assigned to a team should register before March 25, 2019; teams or individual participants should register before April 15, 2019. The submission deadline is April 26, 2019.

Important Dates

Monday, March 18, 2019: invited session proposal closes
Monday, April 1, 2019: student paper submission closes
Monday, April 22, 2019: abstract submission closes
Friday, April 26, 2019: Stat-a-thon data challenge submission closes
Monday, May 6, 2019: online registration closes

Agenda

The short courses will be on Wednesday, May 15, 2019. The three plenary events are the openning keynote session (morning of Thursday, May 16), banquet (dinner of Thursday, May 16), and closing award ceremony (afternoon of Friday, May 17). The agenda of the conference is at https://symposium.nestat.org/program.html.

Venue

The conference will be held in Hilton Hartford, Connecticut. The nearest airport is the Bradley International Airport of Hartford/Springfield (BDL). We have reserved a block of rooms at the rate of $169/night. The special room rate will be available until April 18th or until the group block is sold out, whichever comes first. To book, please visit NESS 2019 Conference Reservation.

In the case the blocked rooms are sold out, an alternative is Red Lion Hotel Hartford (https://www.redlion.com/red-lion-hotel/ct/hartford/red-lion-hotel-hartford), which is about 5-minute walk from Hilton Hartford. We do not, however, have any special agreement with the hotel.

Local Organizers

The Symposium local hosts and organizers from the University of Connecticut are Haim Bar, Jun Yan (chair), and HaiYing Wang. More updates will be posted on our webpage as they become available. Questions are addressed to Jun Yan at jun.yan@uconn.edu.