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The publication of the journals Bernoulli and Stochastic Processes and their Applications and Bernoulli News form an essential component of the Society's activities. As announced elsewhere in this issue, we are extremely pleased that Peter McCullagh has agreed to take over as Editor-in-Chief of Bernoulli in January 2004. Thanks to the vision and hard work of the current Editor-in-Chief, Willem van Zwet, Co-Editor, Sara van de Geer, and Ole Barndorff-Nielson and Jens Ledet Jensen, their predecessors, Bernoulli has established itself as a major international journal since its inception in 1995. The appointment of Peter McCullagh ensures its continued success.
With the success of our publications, World Congresses and regional activities, the Society is well-placed to respond to new challenges. The success of our discipline in developing indispensable methodologies in an increasing number of fields has led naturally to the formation of sub-disciplines with their own communities and activities. However, this in no way diminishes the essential role of societies such as ours but does create challenges in how best to maintain contact and serve as a central focus across the spectrum. The other challenge is how best to take advantage of the revolution in scientific communication occurring in the internet age. Some of these issues were addressed at the Council's meeting. One initiative that emerged was the formation of a committee of research institutes with programs in statistics and probability and their applications to be chaired by Frank den Hollander. Another important issue that was discussed is the question of electronic publication. One step in this direction is the agreement worked out by the ISI and Project Euclid for online publication of Bernoulli. Another initiative is a proposal for the creation of a "statistics arXiv" and Richard Gill was asked by the Council to explore this in cooperation with the IMS. The Executive and Council will continue to explore new possibilities and to develop our programs in order to achieve the objectives of the Society and to serve our members.
--- Don Dawson
(Bernoulli Society President)
With assistance from the ISI office, we are pleased to have negotiated a contract with Elsevier for continued sponsorship of the journal, Stochastic Processes and Their Applications. Development of the new contract coincided with selection of a new editor for the journal: Philip Protter, of Cornell University. In line with our past and current contract with Elsevier, the Society's Publication Committee undertook the selection process. The Society has previously been a sponsor of the Blackwell publication, Journal of Time Series Analysis. However, some aspects of the operation of this journal do not interface well with guidelines laid down in the Society's revised statutes. After discussions with the journal's editor and publisher it was decided that the Society's sponsorship would cease from 1 January 2003. We are pleased that this position was reached amicably, and that the publisher continues to offer Society members a discounted subscription to the journal.
During 2002 the Society took the decision to move the site of its 2004 World Congress from Jerusalem to Barcelona. Our World Congresses are held jointly with the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and the decision to move to Barcelona was made by both societies. We are especially grateful to David Nualart, Chair of the new Local Organising Committee, and Wilfred Kendall, Chair of the new Scientific Committee, for the leadership they have shown in organising the World Congress at its new site, at short notice.
Lastly, but by no means least, we wish to convey our sincere thanks, and our best wishes for the future, to the outgoing ISI Director, Marcel P R van den Broecke, for his support of the Bernoulli Society throughout his term in office. One of the many changes that Marcel has ushered in is the progression to on-line, as well as hard-copy, publication of Bernoulli, through the recently negotiated contract with Project Euclid. We wish Marcel well in retirement, and look forward to working just as constructively and professionally with his able successor, Daniel Berze.
--- Peter Hall
(Bernoulli Society Past President)
For the term 2003 to 2007, the Council of the Society will have the following new members: Tim Brown, Colleen Cutler, Frank den Hollander, Valerie Isham, Zhi-ming Ma and Mario Wschebor. Paul Feigin, Chii-Ruey Hwang, Tom Kurtz, Elisabeth de Turckheim, Ruth Williams and Victor Yohai will continue to act as members of the Council until 2005.
During the ISI 54th Session in Berlin there was a Council meeting and a general assembly of the Bernoulli Society. Topics discussed in those meetings included finances of the Society, activities of the committees and upcoming scientific meetings of the Society.
At the meetings it was decided not to increase membership dues and the price of the journal Bernoulli. Furthermore, it was agreed that from now on all new members of the Bernoulli Society only have to pay dues at half price in the first year of their membership. This offer for new members was already made in 2003.
Other topics at the meetings were web activities (online versions of journals, interactive preprint server, probability digital library project) and activities of the Society to improve the communication between scientific institutes. The web presence of the society was discussed. As also reported in Bernoulli News, there is now an online version of Bernoulli. The online version is produced by Project Euclid. A contract was made between ISI and Project Euclid recently. At the Council meeting it was decided also to put the back issues of Bernoulli online. It was also discussed to keep the online version of Bernoulli News as an interactive HTML version. In the long run it may be appropriate to produce Bernoulli News only as online version. Some other initiatives for web activities in statistical sciences were reported and it was discussed how the Bernoulli Society could be involved.
At the council meeting of the Bernoulli Society the out-going president, Peter Hall, gave a report which appears elsewhere in this issue.
--- Enno Mammen
(Bernoulli Society Scientific Secretary)
Tim Brown is Dean of the Faculty of Science and Professor of Statistics at the Australian National University. Previously he was Head of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Melbourne. His research interests are in probability and applied statistics, particularly point processes, Stein's method for probability approximations and educational measurement. He has been President of the Statistical Society of Australia. He was Professor of Mathematics (Probability and Statistics) at the University of Western Australia (1987-1992) and Foundation Director of the Statistical Consulting Centre at the University of Melbourne (1984-1987).
Frank den Hollander is based at EURANDOM in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. His research interests are in probability theory, mathematical statistical physics, and ergodic theory. Frank is scientific director of EURANDOM, and serves on the advisory boards for mathematics of the Dutch National Science Foundation and the Dutch Royal Academy. Two large projects that currently keep him busy are (1) scaling properties of the incipient infinite cluster for oriented percolation in dimension larger than four, which is joint work with Gordon Slade (Vancouver) and Remco van der Hofstad (Eindhoven), and (2) metastability and droplet growth for the lattice gas subject to Kawasaki dynamics, in two and three dimensions, which is joint work with Anton Bovier (Berlin), Francesca Nardi, Enzo Olivieri and Elisabetta Scoppola (Rome).
Valerie Isham is Professor of Probability and Statistics at University College London. Her research interests lie in applied probability and divide into three main areas: development and investigation of models for stochastic point processes; spatial and spatio-temporal processes arising from applications in the physical sciences, and especially hydrology; models for applications in the life and medical sciences, particularly population processes and epidemic models. Current research projects include the development of models for the continuous simulation of spatial-temporal rainfall fields, and for the population dynamics of multispecies infections in humans. Her professional activities include membership of the Bernoulli Society's Committee on Probability and Statistics in the Physical Sciences, and of the Mathematics Strategic Advisory Team for the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), and a range of editorial roles. She has held various positions in the Royal Statistical Society, including Vice-President of the Society and Chairman of the Research Section.
The main event of the Latin American Chapter, Congreso Latinoamericano de Probabilidad y Estadistica Matematica (CLAPEM), will take place in Punta del Este, Uruguay, 22-26 March 2004, its IXth meeting. Ernesto Mordecki is the chair of the organising committee, and the website is at imerl.fing.edu.uy/clapem/. CLAPEM was initially scheduled for November 2003, but serious incidents in regional economy forced its delay to March 2004. CLAPEM takes place every two years. It includes a series of short courses, aimed to introduce PhD students and young colleagues to major areas of current research and a series of invited lectures and contributed talks. In this meeting, short courses will be given by Victor de la Pena, Aart van der Vaart, Hermann Thorisson, Nanny Wermuth, David Cox and Simon Tavare, and invited lectures by Yuval Peres (opening lecture), Miguel Abadi, Jean Bertoin, Rolando Biscay, Tom Britton, Alejandra Cabana, Juan Cuesta, Antonio Cuevas, Eustacio del Barrio, Georgina Flesia, Marc Lavielle, Michel Ledoux, Jose Rafael Leon, Gabor Lugosi, Enno Mammen, Servet Martinez, Laurent Saloff-Coste, Mark van der Laan; Maria Eulalia Vares and Victor Yohai.
During the CLAPEM, the best regional PhD theses in Probability and Statistics will be awarded for the fourth time. The Francisco Aranda Ordaz award will be given for one thesis in Probability and one thesis in Statistics. The number of candidates has grown substantially and constantly from the first awards.
The Latin American Chapter has sought to reorganise its structure, and particular attention has been paid to increase the number of affiliates and regional events. However, in 2001 and later, many countries of the region suffered abrupt economical changes and a severe general crisis that, in particular, dramatically affected universities and research centres. In that context, most of the effort of the LARC has been devoted to encouraging the work of young researchers, trying to stimulate their efforts and promoting the interaction and integration of efforts and experiences between them. We hope that IX CLAPEM will be a turning point on the story of the LARC, and that our regional committee will finally have the chance to face a period of expansion.
--- Gonzalo Perera
(Chair, LARC)
The 25th European Meeting of Statisticians (www.ems2005.no/) will be held in Oslo, Norway, 24-29 July 2004, under the auspices of the European Regional Committee. The Scientific Program Committee Chair is Aad van der Vaart (aad@cs.vu.nl) to whom Bernoulli Society members are invited to make suggestions for invited speakers and sessions.
The last SemStat Meeting took place in Goteburg, and the local organiser was Holger Rootzen. It was attended by about 50 young researchers. The atmosphere was very pleasant and everybody enjoyed it. The new Chairperson of the Semstat Committee, Barbel Finkenstadt, has done a great job with the organisation of this meeting as well as with the subsequent editorship (jointly with Holger Rootzen) of the 4th Semstat Volume. It is entitled Extreme Values in Finance, Telecommunications and the Environment and is soon to be published by Chapman and Hall/CRC: look out for it!
The members of the European Regional Committee of the Bernoulli Society in the period 2002?2004 are Claudia Kluppelberg (Chair) (cklu@ma.tum.de), Michael Soerensen (Past Chair), Marie Huskova (Program Coordinator), Enno Mammen (BS Scientific Secretary), Marcel van den Broecke (Director of the Permanent Office of the ISI), Marc Aerts, Stephen P Brooks, Alexander Bulinski, Petros Dellaportas, Ingrid K Glad, Peter Imkeller, Adam Jakubowski, Tonu Kollo, Catherine Laredo, Stephan Morgenthaler, Tamas Mori, Daniel Pena, Mihael Perman and Aad van der Vaart.
The European Regional Committee held its 2003 meeting during the 54th ISI Session in Berlin, Germany. The following new members were nominated to replace those retiring in 2004: Eva Vedel Jensen (Denmark), Sara van de Geer (The Netherlands), Ingrid van Keilegon (Belgium), Andras Zempleni (Hungary), Zoran Vondracek (Croatia), Antonia Turkman (Portugal) and Jurg Husler (Switzerland). The Steering Committee of the Seminaire Europeen de Statistique (SemStat) consists of Ole E Barndorff-Nielsen, Barbel Finkenstadt (Chair), Wilfrid Kendall, Michael Sorensen, Gesine Reinert, Aad van der Vaart and Leo Held. The minutes of the ERC meeting in Berlin can be down-loaded from www-m4.mathematik.tu-uenchen.de/m4/erc/.
--- Claudia Kluppelberg
(Chair, European Regional Committee)
The Committee is currently sponsoring the Workshop on Multivariate Time Series Analysis, Heidelberg, 25-28 February 2004 (organised by R Dahlhaus, J Kurths, E Mammen and J Timmer) and TIES 2004: The International Environmetrics Society and ACCURACY 2004: 6th International Symposium on Spatial Accuracy Assessment, 28 June - 1 July 2004, Portland, USA. The Committee has a website at www.stat.berkeley.edu/~brill/CPS2/ where more details of Committee activities may be obtained.
There is an attempt to provide a list of pertinent conferences. The Chair is serving on the Program Committee of the Bernoulli Society World Congress 2004 and of the Bernoulli portion of the 2005 ISI Meeting. Following the Byelaws of the Committee, the Chairing of the Committee will pass from David Brillinger to the Chair Elect, Wojbor Woyczynski, at the 2004 Congress.
The Members of the Committee are A Antoniadis, R Assuncao, D Cochi, A El-Shaarawi, R Gill, V Gupta, P Guttorp, V Isham, J MacKay, G Michailidis, S Morgenthaler, Y Ogata, H Pavlopoulous, J Scarge, R Smith, V Solo, and W Woyczynski.
--- David R Brillinger
(Chair, C(PS)^2)
--- Rodney Wolff
(Editor, Bernoulli News)