I attended the Young Statisticians Conference YSC2019 held in Manuka Oval Building in Canberra, Australia between 1-2 October 2019. For me, I can frankly admit that it was my first chance to attend such a conference. It was a great experience and magnificent opportunity for me to attend, present and exchange thoughts and ideas related to my research topic and other topics in statistics with my young fellow statisticians. 

This conference involves a large scale gathering of young statisticians who are in the first 10 years of their statistical career, or currently studying for a PhD, MSc or BSc in statistics or a subject with statistical content and early-career professionals in statistics and data analysis from all around Australia and some keynote speakers from the world. Attending this conference allowed me to discuss the latest developments in statistics.

In general, this conference aimed at:

-          Establishing channels of communication between the young statisticians to stay in contact with the latest developments, research efforts and innovations in the statistics filed.

-          Discussion of the latest research topics in statistics and outcomes.

-          Highlighting challenges facing the career and how to overcome these challenges.

This conference is considered a unique event that provide a serious opportunity for PhD students, around Australia to meet and exchange ideas and discuss plans to promote the role of statistics in the daily life aspects and in various industry fields.

For me, I did present about fitting dispersed count data using mean parametrized Conway-Maxwell-Poisson model and talked about my new package mpcmp.

 This conference was organised and managed by a committee of young people mostly students, and that gave them the chance to improve their organisational and managerial skills and become leaders in their discipline in the future.

Absolutely, I would like to attend this conference again and be part of the Conference Committee if needed. 

 At this conference, a number of keynote speakers delivered very important speeches and presentations related to latest research efforts and developments in statistical industry.

Among those speakers, was Dr Alison Hill who presented on ‘The Art of Literate Projecting’ which  was a very good presentation that gave a positive energy for young statisticians. Also, how great was hearing from Teresa Dickinson, deputy Australian statistician from the Australian Bureau of Statistics about Big data and about the role of Australian Bureau of Statistics in providing official statistics to inform Australia’s important decisions.

I am very graceful to Statistical Society of Australia of providing me with the Travel Grant and gave me the chance to attend this conference and deliver my presentation.

Aya Alwan