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What is SBSS?

The Section on Bayesian Statistical Science (SBSS) of the ASA provides a forum for statisticians and people who have interest in the Bayesian paradigm. The broad objectives of the Section are: to encourage research on theory and methods of statistical inference and decision making associated with Bayes' theorem and to encourage the application and proper use of Bayesian procedures in the behavioral, biological, managerial, engineering, environmental, legal, medical, pharmaceutical, physical, and social sciences.

2022 ASA SBSS student paper competition


Congratulations
to our SBSS Student Paper Award Winners and a special mention to the Laplace Award Winner Vittorio Orlandi from Duke University! Winners presented their work at the 2022 JSM and included the following scholars:
Junsouk Choi, Texas A&M UniversityJizhou Kang, University of California, Santa CruzBrian King, Rice UniversityTakuo Matsubara, Newcastle UniversityVittorio Orlandi, Duke UniversityJennifer Proper, University of MinnesotaZhuo Sun, University College LondonYaotian Wang, University of PittsburghYuliang Xu, University of MichiganZuheng Xu, University of British Columbia
Many thanks to our members who donated time as judges: Joseph Antonelli, Cici Bauer, Anirban Bhattacharya, François-Xavier Briol, Scott Bruce, Xuan Cao, Sameer Deshpande, Leo Duan, Joyee Ghosh, Rajarshi Guhaniyogi, Jingyu He, Hwanhee Hong, Guanyu Hu, Georgios Karagiannis, Jian Kong, Bledar Konomi, Daniel Kowal, Sirio Legramanti, Zehang Li, Simon Mak, David Matteson, Thomas Murray, Yang Ni, Georgia Papadogeorgou, Debdeep Pati, Christine Peterson, Qifan Song, Rebecca Steorts, Hyungsuk Tan, Xiaojing Wang, Jason Xu, Yanxun Xu, Giacomo Zanella, and Quan Zhou, along with Program Chair Veronica Berrocal and Chair-Elect and Student Paper Award Coordinator Huiyan Sang.

2021 Laplace and SBSS Student Paper Award Winners

We are pleased to let you know that Niloy Biswas (Havard University) was announced as the recipient of the 2021 Laplace Award at JSM.  Niloy was selected for his paper titled "Coupled Markov chain Monte Carlo for high-dimensional regression with Half-t priors" authored with Anirban Bhattacharya (Texas A&M), Pierre E. Jacob (Harvard), and James E. Johndrow (University of Pennsylvania). Xiao-Li Meng is Niloy's advisor. 

Congratulation to Niloy and the other recipients of the SBSS Student Paper Competition:

Marta Catalano - Universita' Bocconi

Debangan Dey - Johns Hopkins University

Gabriel Hessler - UCLA

Sirio Legramanti - Universita' Bocconi

Yi Liu - University of Chicago

Giorgio Paulon - University of Texas at Austin

Anna Yanchenko - Duke University

Haoxuan Wu - Cornell University

Xiaotian Zheng - UC Santa Cruz


And a big thanks to Veronica Berrocal (UC Irvine) for chairing the selection committee!

2020 SBSS Student Paper Award Winners

We are pleased to announce the following winners of this year's SBSS student paper competition.  They were selected from a record number of 60 entrants.  

Fan Bu  (Duke University)
Xu Chen   (Duke University)  
Zhehui Chen (Georgia Institute of Technology) 
Wei Han  (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)   
Bradley Hupf  (Florida State) 
Chang Liu  (North Carolina State) 

Masoero Lorenzo (MIT) 
Jennifer Starling  (University of Texas at Austin) 
Xinming Yang   (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)    
Fangting Zhou (Texas A&M) 

The winner of the Laplace price will be selected from this group and announced at the upcoming JSM in Philadelphia.  There will also be two Topic Contributed sessions where the students can present their work at the JSM.  Congratulations to these students and scholars! 

JSM 2019 Recap and Plans for JSM 2020

SBSS has had another tremendously successful year!  At the most recent JSM in Denver, CO, we sponsored 2 short courses, 3 roundtable discussions, 11 invited sessions, 19 topic-contributed sessions, and 34 contributed sessions.  Members also had the opportunity to meet and mingle at the SBSS Mixer on Tuesday night where we honored the student paper award winners.  Additionally, Giri Gopalan (University of Iceland) was awarded with the Laplace prize for most outstanding student research paper.  The SBSS committee wishes to thank all who were involved in a successful JSM 2019 program with special thanks to Robert Gramacy who acted as program chair.

As we put another JSM behind us, we are already making plans for the SBSS program at JSM 2020.   The invited session proposals are due by Sep 5th, 2019.  More details can be found at this webpage.  We invite all SBSS members to actively participate in the JSM 2020 program.  We’ll see you all in Philadelphia!

SBSS at JSM 2019, Denver

SBSS has an exciting program at JSM in Denver this year!  First, we are pleased to have the following short and continuing education courses by distinguished scholars:
  • Sunday (7/28) 8:30am-5pm: “Practical Considerations for Bayesian and Frequentist Adaptive Clinical Trials” by Peter Muller, Byron Jones and Frank Bretz
  • Monday (7/29) 8:30am-5pm: “Bayesian Time Series Analysis and Forecasting” by Raquel Prado, Marco Ferreira and Mike West
SBSS is sponsoring three roundtable discussions:
  • Sunday (7/28) 12:30-1:50pm: "Considerations in Bayesian Framework Implementation and Impact on Small-Population Clinical Development" - by Freda Cooner, Amgen
  • Wednesday (7/31)
    • 7-8:15am: “Mixture Prior for Sparse Signals with Dependent Covariance Structure” by Ling Wang, Michigan State University
    • 12:30-1:50pm: “Modern Bayesian Software: Current Capability and Usage” by Fang Chen, SAS
Additionally, the following invited sessions are primarily sponsored by SBSS and/or ISBA at the following times:
  • Sunday (7/28)
    • 2:00pm - CC-605: “Advocating, Implementing and Explaining Bayesian Analyzes in Statistical Consultations” with speakers Mark Glickman, Scott Berry, Christopher Franck and Chris Holloman
    • 4:00pm - CC-708: “Highlights from Bayesian Analysis” with speakers Bo Ning, Hang Qian, Christopher Glynn and Matt Paul Wand
  • Monday (7/29)
    • 8:30am - CC-203: “The ABC of Making an Impact” with speakers Carlo Albert, Louis Raynal, David Frazier
    • 10:30am - CC-605: “Scaling up Bayesian Inference for Massive Data Sets” with speakers Paul Fearnhead, Tamara Broderick, Robert Kohn and Anirban Bhattacharya
  • Tuesday (7/30)
    • 10:30am - CC-301: “Innovative Bayesian Approaches in Clinical Trials and Practical Considerations” with speakers Frank Liu, Xinyi Xu, Mourad Tighiouart and Amarjot Kaur
    • 2pm - CC-103: “All Things Bayesian: The Next Generation” with speakers Debajyoti Sinha, Ananda Sen, Malay Ghosh and Stephanie van Der Pas
  • Wednesday (7/31)
    • 8:30am - CC-603: “Novel Bayesian Methods and Their Impacts on Scientific Applications” with speakers Montserrat Fuentes, Marina Vannucci, David van Dyk and Bani Mallick
    • 10:30am - CC-707: “Scalable Bayesian Models for Time Series and Dynamic Networks: Making an Impact in Business and Socio-Economic Applications” with speakers Lindsay Berry, Xi Chen, Lutz Gruber and Antonietta Mira
    • 2:00pm - CC-605: “Statistics on Street Corners” with speakers Adam Loy, Mahbubul Majumder, Giora Simchoni, Hadley Wickham and Andreas Buja
  • Thursday (8/1)
    • 8:30am - CC-102: “Exploiting Latent Structure for Network Inference” with speakers Bailey Fosdick, Purnamrita Sarkar, Eric Kolaczyk and Vince Lyzinski
    • 8:30am - CC-502: “Recent Advances in the Bayesian Modeling of Large Scale Neuroimaging Data for Brain Activation and Connectivity” with speakers Hernando Ombao, Michele Guindani, Rajarshi Guhaniyogi and John Kornak

Beyond these invited sessions are many topic-contributed or contributed sessions sponsored by SBSS that we invite you to view via the JSM online program.  Finally, the SBSS mixer and business meeting will be held at The Crimson Room, 1403 Larimer Street, Denver, CO 80202 from 5:30-7pm on Tuesday (7/30).  We hope you can all attend!

2019 SBSS Student Paper Award Winners

Congrats to the following student (and coauthor) winners of the SBSS student paper competition!  

Satwik Acharyya, Texas A&M University
Leah Comment, Harvard University
Giri Gopalan, University of Iceland
Aritra Guha, University of Michigan
Kelly Li Kang, University of Texas-Austin
Yusha Liu, Rice University
Qi Ma, North Carolina State University
Sayan Patra, Duke University
Mingwei William Tang, University of Washington
Yixin Wang, Columbia University

We had 42 entrants in total.  The above ten winners will receive travel awards to present their research at two Topic Contributed sessions at the upcoming JSM in Denver.  The winner of the Laplace prize will be selected from this group and announced at the JSM.  Also, we would like to thank the review committee for their efforts in reviewing all the submitted manuscripts!

JSM 2018 Recap and Call for Invited Session Proposals for JSM 2019

We’d like to thank all the participants for a successful JSM 2018 program, with special thanks to Elena Erosheva (program chair), Ana Kupresanin (roundtable host), and Jim Albert, Frank Bretz, Byron Jones and Peter Mueller (short course lecturers)!  We also congratulate the student award winners again on their achievements!

As we put another JSM behind us, we are already making plans for the SBSS program at JSM 2019.  SBSS and the International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA) are jointly soliciting proposals for invited sessions.  The theme of JSM 2019 is "Statistics: Making an Impact" but sessions need not necessarily adhere to this theme.  Invited sessions include invited papers, panels, or posters.  Invited paper sessions consist of 2-6 presenters and/or discussants; invited panels have 3-6 panelists providing commentary on a particular topic; invited poster sessions have 20-30 participants with e-posters addressing a common theme.  Proposals need to be submitted via the online system between July 18 – September 6, 2018.  Please see the announcement for more guidance on invited session proposal preparation and submission.  Program chairs Robert Gramacy (SBSS) and Mahlet Tadesse (ISBA) will work closely together to make sure all Bayesian-themed proposed sessions have the best chance of being selected for the invited program.  They may assign SBSS or ISBA as the primary sponsor independently of whether SBSS or ISBA was indicated in the submitted proposal as the session sponsor.

Upcoming SBSS Events at JSM 2018, Vancouver

With JSM 2018 around the corner, the SBSS program committee would like to share the exciting program that SBSS/ISBA put together for this meeting. 

SBSS/ISBA are offering the following two short and continuing education courses and one roundtable discussion:

- CE 04C: Bayesian thinking: fundamentals, computation, and multilevel modeling (Sat 7/28, 8:30am-5pm)
                 by Jim Albert (Bowling Green State University) 
CE 11C: Practical considerations for Bayesian and frequentist adaptive clinical trials (Sun 7/29, 8:30am-5pm)
                 by Frank Bretz (Novartis Pharma AG), Byron Jones (Novartis Pharma AG) and Peter Mueller (UT Austin) 

- Roundtable discussion: Interpretable Statistical Machine Learning for Validation and Uncertainty Quantification of Complex Models (Tuesday 7/31, 7-8:15am)
                 by Ana Kupresanin (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)

We are the main sponsors for the Invited ePoster session (taking place on Sunday 7/29, 8:30pm) and six Invited Paper sessions:

-Bayesian Nonparametrics in Causal Inference(Sunday 7/29, 2pm)
-New Developments in Bayesian Additive Regression Trees(Monday 7/30, 8:30am)
-Highlights from Bayesian Analysis(Tuesday 7/31, 10:30am)
-Advanced in MCMC and Computational Statistics(Wednesday 10:30am)
-Hierarchical Bayes in a Hierarchical Universe(Wednesday 8/1, 2:00pm)
-Prior Specifications for Finite Bayesian Mixture Models(Thursday 8/2, 8:30am)

W
inners of this year's SBSS student paper competition will present their work in topic contributed sessions on Monday 7/30 at 2pm, and on Tuesday 7/31 at 8:30am.

The other sponsored Topic Contributed sessions will feature:

-Developments in Bayesian Spatial and Spatio-Temporal Modeling of Small Area Health Data(Sunday 7/29, 4pm)
-#LeadwithStatistics in the Social Sciences(Monday 7/30, 10:30am)
-Recent Advances in Bayesian Computation and Modeling of High-Dimensional Multivariate Data(Tuesday 7/31, 2pm)
-Recent Theoretical Advancements for MCMC Algorithms(Wednesday 8/1, 8:30am)
-Bayesian Data Science and Statistical Science(Wednesday 8/1, 10:30am)
-Nonparametric Priors for Exchangeable Data and Beyond(Thursday 8/2, 8:30am)
-Advances in Bayesian Nonparametric Modeling and Computation for Complex Data(Thursday 8/2, 10:30am)

In addition, you are invited to check the online program for the information of ten SBSS/ISBA Contributed Paper sessions.

Finally, don't forget about the SBSS mixer which will take place on Tuesday 7/31 night, 5:30-7:30pm, at Mahony and Sons – Burrard Landing.

See you soon in Vancouver!

SBSS 2019 Student Award Sessions and Ceremony at JSM

IMG_6565.jpgSession I:  Surya (Program Chair Elect), Li Kang, Qi Ma, Giri Gopalan, Satwik Acharyya, Leah Comment (from L to R)

IMG_6566.jpgSession II:  Aritra Guha, Sayan Patra, Robert Gramacy (Program Chair), Yixin Wang, Mingwei Tang, Yusha Liu (from L to R)

IMG_6567.jpgSusan Paddock (SBSS Chair) and Giri Gopalan (Laplace Award Winner)

IMG_6568.jpgSurya Tokdar, Susan Paddock and Satwik Acharyya

IMG_6569.jpgLeah Comment and Susan Paddock

IMG_6570.jpgSusan Paddock and Yusha Liu

IMG_6571.jpgSusan Paddock and Sayan Patra

IMG_6572.jpgYixin Wang and Susan Paddock