January 31, 2014

Researchers from around the world visit UOW for stats conference

The National Institute for Applied Statistics Research Australia (NIASRA) within the School of Mathematics and Applied Statistics at University of Wollongong will host a weeklong conference on statistical methods from 3 February.

Stats Week has been organised by Applied Statistics Education and Research Collaboration and NIASRA to provide keen mathematical minds with access to the latest information about cutting edge statistical methods and research in the field. 

Professor David Steel of NIASRA said professional and academic statisticians, researchers and students with an interest in statistical collaboration and applied statistics from a wide range of organisations, including the Australian Bureau of Statistics, CSIRO, NSW Ministry of Health, Defence Science and Technology Organisation, are expected to attend the conference.

"By bringing together [more than] 100 people [who are] working and interested in new developments in applied statistics, we expect that new research projects will arise and [that] existing projects will benefit from new [statistical] methods that enable researchers to make better use of their data to answer important questions."

Events to be held during Stats Week include an introduction to spatio-temporal statistical modelling with Professor Peter Diggle from Lancaster University Medical School and Distinguished Professor Noel Cressie, UOW, and a course on nonparametric statistical methods with Professor Olivier Thas from Ghent University in Belgium. 

The 6th ASEARC Conference, which is being held during Stats Week, will feature keynote speeches by Dr Bronwyn Harch, Chief of Computational Informatics at the CSIRO, and Professor Peter Diggle.

Dr Doug Shaw from Statistical Society of Australia Inc. and Dr Sui-Ming Tam from the Australian Bureau of Statistics will also speak at the conference.

During the month of February, UOW will also see two prominent and politically influential mathematicians - Professor Gang Tian and Professor Xiao Zhang - each meet with Vice-Chancellor Paul Wellings and deliver a specialist public lecture. Professor Tian of Peking University and University of Princeton is well known for his contributions to geometric analysis and quantum cohomology and will deliver his lecture, 'Poincare conjecture and geometry', on 7 February. Professor Zhang from the Institute of Mathematics in Academy of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, will speak on 14 February.