Prof. Murray Aitkin (U. Melb.) was awarded an honourary fellowship at the International Workshop on Statistical Modelling (IWSM 2019) in Guimarães, Portugal.

Dr Anthony Lee (U. Bristol) recently visited Australia, sponsored by the SSA and the Australian Centre of Excellence for Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers (ACEMS).  Anthony visited QUT, UNSW, University of Adelaide and Monash University.  He gave an invited talk at the International Conference on Monte Carlo methods in Sydney on likelihood approximations for latent variable models.  Anthony presented an SSA/ACEMS sponsored tutorial on sequential Monte Carlo methods at QUT and Monash, both well attended.   These talks provided excellent learning opportunities for Australian statisticians. 

Anthony had productive discussions with several academics from all visited institutions.  This included discussions on sequential Monte Carlo methods, computational Bayesian algorithms and applications.  It is very likely that new international collaborations for several Australian Bayesian statisticians will arise from these discussions.  Anthony had a very positive impression of the state of Bayesian statistics in Australia: 

“Overall, I was most struck by the interplay between methodology and applications in Australia. There is a wide variety of applications that are being tackled with complex models using Monte Carlo methods as the key computational tool. I think that this diversity is critical for driving important algorithmic innovations and pushing the boundary of classes of model and data we can robustly handle.”

Abstracts for contributed talks or posters at Bayes on the Beach are due by August 16. Early bird registration for Bayes Comp closes on August 14. Abstracts for contributed posters will still be accepted up until December 15. Proposals for Member Invited Sessions at the ISBA World Meeting close August 22.

Executive Committee of the Bayes Section of SSA (Chris Drovandi, Clara Grazian, Sophie Zaloumis, David Frazier, Sama Low-Choy & Matt Moores) with additional contributions from Rob Salamone