The LISA 2020 program is seeking to establish an Advisory Council to assist with the creation and sustaining of a global network of statistical collaboration labs (“stat labs”) in developing countries (see below for more information about LISA 2020).
We are specifically looking for contributors who can apply their passion and expertise in the areas of: 1) communication and publicity; 2) organization of the mentoring network; 3) securing funding; 4) organization of non-university stat labs; 5) regional coordinators; 6) organization of stat labs in N. America; 7) statistics capacity building; and 8) development or delivery of training content. We are also open to new ideas on how you could support the LISA 2020 program.
If you are interested in being a member of this council, please apply at this link: Advisory Council Application (http://goo.gl/forms/fGE5HcIU2n)
There will be a face-to-face meeting of council members on February 18, 2016 in San Diego, California to coincide with the 2016 Conference on Statistical Practice (CSP). Please also consider submitting an abstract for a talk at CSP, which is due by June 25, 2015. More information about CSP can be found here: (www.amstat.org/meetings/csp/2016/conferenceinfo.cfm).
What is LISA 2020? The LISA 2020 program was created by LISA (Virginia Tech’s Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Statistical Analysis) to train statisticians from developing countries to become collaborative statisticians and support them to create stat labs at their home universities or institutions to train the next generation of collaborative statisticians and help researchers, government officials, and local industries and NGOs apply statistical thinking to make better decisions. Our goal is to create a network of 20 such stat labs in developing countries by 2020.
Each of these new stat labs will foster education in collaborative statistics and will promote the proper application of statistics to solve real-world problems. With a strong mentoring network, just one statistician trained to communicate and collaborate with non-statisticians can enable and accelerate 50 or more research projects per year. Each project can impact hundreds or thousands of people. LISA 2020 will unlock the collaborative potential of technically trained statisticians, who in turn will unlock the research potential of their collaborators and teach other statisticians to do the same. These collaborations, now with the power of statistical thinking open to them, will be key to improving human welfare worldwide. More info is available at www.LISA2020.org
LISA 2020 Update
Summary: LISA has hosted and trained seven Fellows, four new stat labs have been created, and two LISA Ambassadors are currently working at two of these newly created laboratories.
LISA 2020 Fellows work in LISA for varying periods of time and are trained in the laboratory to communicate and collaborate with non-statisticians. After the training, the goal is for fellows to return to their home university or institution to create a statistical collaboration laboratory that will work under local conditions based on their experience with LISA. LISA works with the newly created lab to send graduate students who have experience as LISA lead collaborators to the lab to help build and sustain it as needed. These students are referred to as LISA Ambassadors.
LISA has hosted seven fellows: Olawale Awe (Nigeria), Dr. Benedicto Kazuzuru (Tanzania), Emanuel Msemo (Tanzania), Richard Ngaya (Tanzania), Jingli Xing (China), Dr. Mohamed Djedour (Algeria), and Dr. Ayele Taye Goshu (Ethiopia). In addition, BECCA (a stat lab at UPenn) helped train Olawale Awe.
The LISA 2020 Network has grown to include four labs: LISAC (Laboratory for Statistical Analysis and Collaboration) at Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) in Nigeria, SUALISA at Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) in Tanzania, UI-LISA at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, and the HwU Statistical Collaboration Center at Hawassa University in Ethiopia.
LISA Ambassadors: Ian Crandell is finishing up his six month stay at LISAC in Nigeria and Adam Edwards has just arrived at SUALISA in Tanzania for a six month capacity building visit.
Feel free to forward this request for applications to others you think might be interested.
------------------------------
Eric Vance
Virginia Tech-Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Statistical Analysis (LISA)
Director and Associate Research Professor
Blacksburg VA, United States
------------------------------