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AMSTAT News August 2018
2018 Student Paper Award Winners

2018 Bernard Harris Memorial Symposium: Risk in the 21st Century, Raleigh, NC
The Risk Analysis Section receives gift 

Inviting Contributed Papers for JSM 2011 in Miami, Florida
Winners of the Student Paper Award for 2009
2005 Homeland Defense: How are we meeting the new challenges?
2005 Officers
2004 Paper Awardee at JSM
2004 Officers 
2003 Student Paper Award

Lee Abramson Receives the NRC Distinguished Service Award
The Intersection of Risk Analysis and Total Quality Management
How Risk Analysis Gets Done in Large Corporations
Scenario and Parametric Sensitivity and Uncertainty Analyses
Research Collaborations Sought at INERIS
JSM99/Baltimore: Paper Award
Related Newsletters


2018 Student Paper Award Winners

Paper competition winners with section officers

From left to right: Edsel Pena (Council of Sections Representative), Sanjib Basu (Program Chair), Xingyuan Li (Runner-up), Amal Agarwal (Winner), Mike Pennell (Chair), Chris Sroka (Secretary/Treasurer).                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Page]

2018 Bernard Harris Memorial Symposium: Risk in the 21st Century, Raleigh, NC

Speakers and Harris Family (Top left): Front row (left to right): Edward Melnik (NYU), Stanley Sclove (Univ Illinois-Chicago), David Banks (Duke), Susan Harris.  Back row (left to right): Richard Smith (UNC-Chapel Hill), Clarice Weinberg (NIEHS), Erin Charles (nee’ Harris).
Presenter (Top Right): Dale Hall (Society of Actuaries) presents "Actuarial Risk Analysis using Predictive Analytics, Segmentation and Decomposition Techniques."
Poster (Bottom): Shiwen Shen (left) and Taeho Kim (right) of the University of South Carolina present during the poster session.                                                                         Page]


The Risk Analysis Section receives gift 

Alexandra Kapatou would like to announce that in 2016, the Risk Analysis Section received a generous gift of $30,000 from the Bernard Harris family. The donation is to be used in conferences and invited speakers in interdisciplinary areas related to risk.


Inviting Contributed Papers for JSM 2011 in Miami, Florida

The Section on Risk Analysis of the American Statistical Association invites contributed papers for the 2011 Joint Statistical Meetings in Miami, FL. The deadline to submit an abstract to JSM is February 1, 2011 .

The Section on Risk Analysis is also soliciting entries for the Student/Young Researcher Paper Competition for the same meeting.

Students and young researchers who want to be considered for this competition must submit a manuscript of their work, in addition to the abstract. Manuscripts should be sent to Alexandra Kapatou via email at akapatou@comcast.net. All entries must arrive by the deadline given below. Note that the deadline has changed.

The ASA no longer requires participants to register and pay their JSM fees during the abstract submission process. As a result, the Section on Risk Analysis has decided to allow students and young researchers more time to prepare and submit their manuscript. The new deadline is midnight March 1, 2011. Please include the words "Student/Young Researcher Paper Award" in the subject line of the email.

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Winners of the Student Paper Award for 2009

First prize($1000 and plaque) to Ya-Hsiu Chuang of the University of Pittsburgh for the paper:

Bayesian model averaging approach in health effect studies: Sensitivity analyses using PM10 and cardiopulmonary hospital admission in Alleghany County, Pennsylvania, and simulated data, by Ya-Hsiu Chuang and Sati Mazumdar, University of Pittsburgh.

Runner-up($500 and plaque) to Tim van Erven of Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, for the paper:

Catching up faster by switching sooner: A prequential solution to the AIC-BIC dilemma, by Tim van Erven, Peter Gruenwald and Steven de Rooij, CWI, Amsterdam.

 

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2005 Homeland Defense: How Are We Meeting the New Challenges?

In the September 2005 issue of Amstat News, David Banks provides a nice commentary on the need to make the statistician's role more prominent in the homeland defense arena. His two page article cites the work of many talented individuals and why we should be at the head of the table and not on the sidelines as backup players. Check out this informative article. ASA Publications.

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2005 New Officers

Congratulations and best wishes to the new Risk Analysis Section Officers that are beginning January 1st, 2005. Our new Chair-Elect is Susan M. Sereika from the University of Pittsburgh; and the new Program Chair-Elect is Ingo Ruczinski is from Johns Hopkins University. For more details about our officiers, check the Officers page.

 

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2004 Paper Awardee at JSM

Congratulations and best wishes to A. John Bailer from Miami University for his presentation on Model Uncertainty and Risk Estimation for Quantal Responses.

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2004 Officers

Congratulations and best wishes to the new Risk Analysis Section Officers that are beginning January 1st, 2004. The new Chair-Elect is David Banks, U.S. Food and Drug Administration; new Program Chair-Elect is Steven A. Anderson, U.S. Food and Drug Administration; returning Secretary/Treasurer is Lee R. Abramson, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the new Publications Officer is Jana L. Asher, Carnegie Mellon University.

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2003 Student Paper Award

Congratulations and best wishes to M. Brent McHenry, University of Pittsburgh for receiving the 2003 Student Paper Award on his paper entitled, "A Modified Estimator for the Cumulative Covariate Effect in Aalen's Additive Risk Model".

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Lee Abramson Receives the NRC Distinguished Service Award

"Lee R. Abramson received the NRC Distinguished Service Award from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) In recognition of his service as the agency's primary authority on the development and application of statistical methods to resolve pressing issues in nuclear regulation. The Distinguished Service Award is the highest honor granted by the NRC to an individual. It consists of a citation, a gold medal, and a cash award of $10,000.

Dr. Abramson is a senior research statistician at the NRC, where he has worked since 1977. In 1981, while serving as acting chief of the Applied Statistics Branch, he recieved the NRC Meritorious Service Award in recognition of his outstanding performance as both supervisor and statistician. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics and a PhD in mathematical statistics, both from Columbia University in New YOrk. Dr. Abramson is a member of the American Statistical Association and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. He has been teh secretary/treasurer of the ASA section on Risk Analysis since its inception and is the Science Fair Coordinator of the Washington Statistical Society" (Amstat News, Issue 304, p. 31, October 2002).

October, 2002

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The Intersection of Risk Analysis and Total Quality Management

A comparison of decision analysis and design of experiments, by Robert F. Bordley, Chair, Risk Analysis Section

 

Aug 18, 1999

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How Risk Analysis Gets Done in Large Corporations

By Robert F. Bordley, Chair, Risk Analysis Section

Practical use of risk analysis is more than simply doing mathematical calculations to determine the `optimal' choice. It requires extensive creativity in thinking about new alternatives, in scoping the problem broadly and in ensuring that all relevant constituencies have been involved. For this reason, risk analysis in large corporations is conducted in the context of a process called the Dialogue Decision Process. In this letter, I briefly summarize the process.

Aug 17, 1999

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Scenario and Parametric Sensitivity and Uncertainty Analyses

For those who may be interested in this topic, the following book chapter on Bayesian sensitivity analysis is now available for downloading. Draper D, Saltelli A, Tarantola S (1999). Scenario and parametric sensitivity and uncertainty analyses in nuclear waste disposal risk assessment: the case of GESAMAC. In Mathematical and Statistical Methods for Sensitivity Analysis. (Saltelli A, Chan K, Scott M, eds.), New York: Wiley (forthcoming). (Shows that variance-based sensitivity analyses are not fully adequate in determining the factors most responsible for high radiologic doses arising from the failure of underground storage facilities for nuclear waste, and that about 30\% of the overall predictive uncertainty for log dose arises from uncertainty about the scenario describing how the facility will fail---a source of uncertainty previously largely ignored or treated qualitatively. Also explores the use of projection pursuit regression in sensitivity analysis.)

David Draper, Feb 10, 1999.

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Research Collaborations Sought at INERIS

To all interested parties:

Our research institute (INERIS, France) has started developing a large European research collaboration on the topic of uncertainty analysis and uncertainty reduction for risk assessment of chemicals (risks for health and environment). The project would cover all areas of risk assessment. Several of these specialty areas rely on complex models of pollutant transports and effects to evaluate risks. While these models can be mathematically sophisticated, the statistical methods used for their parameterization, inference etc. are often suboptimal (most effort being spent on developing model structure). Some of these models also tend to operate on large scales, similar in this respect to meteorologic models (regions, countries, Europe...) and their meshing why spatio-temporal data needs for example to be investigated. Research teams interested in joining the project can contact me for further information and interaction.

Frederic Y. Bois, Nov 23, 1998.

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JSM99/Baltimore: Paper Award

The Risk Analysis Section is pleased to announce an award of one hundred dollars ($100) for the best paper presented at JSM 1999 in Baltimore in a contributed paper session sponsored by the Section. The Award Committee, consisting of Vincent C. Arena, Bernard Harris, and Lee Abramson will appoint a Panel of ten section members to act as judges. The Risk Analysis Section hopes that the award will contribute to continuing the tradition of exciting interdisciplinary applications of risk analysis presented at the JSM.

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Related Newsletters

Decision Analysis Society Newsletter 
Newsletter on decision and reasoning under uncertainty
Newsletter of the HSSS (Highly Structures Stochastic Systems)

 

This newsletter is open to all members for contributions. You can submit announcements, links, commentaries and so on. To contribute, please send e-mail to Vincent Arena arena@pitt.edu.