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Bernoulli Prize Nominations Deadline
Schramm Lecture in Probability and Stochastic Processes
President-Elect Wilfrid Kendall Makes University of Warwick Headlines
World Congress in Probability and Statistics 2012:
News From the Publications Committee
The deadline for nominations for the “Bernoulli Prize for an Outstanding Survey Article in Probability or Mathematical Statistics” is November 30th. Please submit your nominations to the chair of the nominations committee, David Aldous (aldous@stat.Berkeley.EDU). The Bernoulli Prize consists of a monetary prize of Euro 1000 and an official certificate. Introduced in 2011, it will be awarded biennially, alternating between the respective areas of mathematical statistics and probability.
The IMS and the Bernoulli Society have recently cooperated to create a new joint lecture in probability and stochastic processes, named in honor of Oded Schramm (http://imstat.org/Schramm/). The lecture will be given annually and will be featured at meetings (co)-sponsored by the IMS or the Bernoulli Society with a strong attendance by researchers in probability and stochastic processes. It is anticipated that the first Schramm lecture will be delivered at the Stochastic Processes and their Applications meeting to be held in Boulder, Colorado in 2013. A fund has been established to support the travel expenses of the Schramm lecturer. Contributions to this fund in honor of Oded Schramm are welcome; please visit https://secure.imstat.org/secure/orders/schrammcontribution.asp
News of Wilfrid Kendall’s installation as President-Elect of the Bernoulli Society was featured as the main story in University of Warwick’s newspaper, “Insite”, on August 26, 2011. The electronic version of the article may be found at http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/insite/newsandevents/warwickpeople/wilfrid_kendall_bernoulli
Steffen Lauritzen (Oxford) and Simon Tavaré (Cambridge) have been elected as Fellows of Royal Society of London. For more information, visit http://royalsociety.org/about-us/fellowship/new-fellows-2011/. Congratulations!
The 8th World Congress in Probability and Statistics (in conjunction with the 2012 IMS Annual Meeting) will take place July 9-14, 2012, in Istanbul, Turkey (http://www.worldcong2012.org). Scheduled every four years, this meeting is a major worldwide event in mathematical statistics, probability, stochastic processes and their applications. The venue of the meeting is Grand Cevahir Hotel & Convention Center.
Submission of abstracts is now open at http://www.worldcong2012.org/?p=abstract
Ed Waymire (BS President) and Ruth Williams (IMS President) recently discussed a collaboration to provide childcare at the 8th World Congress in Probability and Statistics, July 9-14, 2012, Istanbul. The purpose of the initiative is to encourage and support the participation at the congress of members having child care responsibilities. The Bernoulli Society executive committee supports this expenditure of funds. IMS has been doing this for some ten years and has a mechanism in place to apply for support up to $250 per IMS member only.
http://imstat.org/meetings/childcare.htm
IMS would modify their page for this particular congress to include Bernoulli and Elyse Gustafson (IMS Executive Director) agreed to manage the distribution of funds. Persons could apply as IMS or Bernoulli or Joint members.
The 36th Conference on Stochastic Processes and Applications (SPA) will take place July 29-August 2, 2013, in Boulder, Colorado. Organized under the auspices of the Bernoulli Society and cosponsored by the IMS, the annual SPA meetings are the premier annual forum for researchers in probability theory, random processes and their applications. The conference website has been launched, and can be found here: http://math.colorado.edu/spa2013/
Plenary talks and invited sessions will be announced before year's end. The formal call for contributed sessions/talks as well as details on local information and travel grants for young researchers will be posted in early Fall 2012. Further information will appear in due time at the conference website. In the meantime, all inquires may be directed to Brian Rider (Brian.Rider@Colorado.Edu).
The members of publications committee are Michael Sørensen (Chair) and Maria Eulalia Vares, who were also members of the previous publications committee, and the newly appointed members Tony Cai, Frank den Hollander, Wilfrid Kendall, Gareth Roberts, Holger Rootzen, who started work after the World Statistics Congress in Dublin in August. Let me take this opportunity to thank the new members for their willingness to work for the Bernoulli Society on this important committee, and to thank the outgoing members Claudia Klüppelberg and Peter McCullagh for their many contributions to the work of the committee since 2008.
In July, the Bernoulli Society Council approved a new set of working rules for the publications committee. The committee advises the Executive Committee on all aspects of publication and approves the policies of the Bernoulli Society in this area. In particular, it assesses the long-term welfare of the publications of the society and is involved in the search for chief editors of the publications.
An important activity has been negotiations with Elsevier about renewal of the contract concerning the journal Stochastic Processes and Their Applications. Last year an ad hoc committee consisting of Frank den Hollander (chair), Thomas Mikosch, Michael Sørensen, Eulalia Vares and Ed Waymire reviewed the contract with Elsevier and planned the negotiations. In February 2011, Frank den Hollander, Thomas Mikosch and Michael Sørensen met with Elsevier representatives in Leiden, the Netherlands, for what turned out to be very constructive negotiations. Many members have been concerned about the price of the journal. Elsevier understood these concerns and agreed to reduce the price very considerably over the next few years. There was also agreement about delayed open access to the journal, and Elsevier offered to sponsor the society in various ways such as the Ito prize and travel awards for society conferences. The new and very satisfactory contract with Elsevier was signed during the SPA conference in Oaxaca, Mexico. It has been decided that Elsevier will sponsor two travel awards for the young researcher presenting at the Bernoulli Society World Congress in Istanbul in 2012. Details about these awards will be published later, and also be sure to check the world congress web page http://www.worldcong2012.org/
While the relations to Elsevier have improved very considerably during the recent year, relations to Springer have unfortunately deteriorated. Springer's sudden discontinuation of the book series "Selected Works in Probability and Statistics" has done considerable damage to the reputation of Springer in the probability and statistics community, where a large number of people had put a lot of effort into the series. The publications committee had, for instance, ensured that papers in all Bernoulli Society journals could be reprinted in the series free of charge (including the freely available internet version of the series). Presently, negotiations are ongoing concerning the open-access electronic Encyclopedia of Probability and Statistics, which is a joint project between Springer and several scientific societies including the Bernoulli Society. We can only hope that Springer will not further damage their reputation by insisting on changing the open access nature of the encyclopedia. On the positive side, the Bernoulli Society sponsors a new Springer book series with the title Lévy Matters.
New chief editors have been found for some of the Bernoulli Society journals. Takashi Kumagai has agreed to replace Thomas Mikosch as the editor of Stochastic Processes and Their Applications when Thomas' 3-year period ends in March 2012. Jointly with the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS), the Bernoulli Society publishes a number of open access electronic journals. A BS/IMS committee chaired by Maria Eulia Vares has found the following new editors. Michel Ledoux replaces Bálint Tóth as the editor of the Electronic Journal of Probability, Anton Bovier replaces Timo Seppäläinen as the editor of Electronic Communications in Probability and Laurent Saloff-Coste replaces Geoffrey R. Grimmett as the editor of Probability Surveys. I would like to thank the retiring editors for their hard work for the journals.
Michael Sørensen
Chair of the Publications Committee
…. Continued