The 2009 Rao Prize Conference

Friday, May 22, 2009

Department of Statistics
Penn State University
University Park, PA

The Department of Statistics will host a one-day conference on statistics and probability on Friday, May 22, 2009. The centerpoint of the conference is the award of the 2009 Rao Prize to Professor Peter J. Bickel of the University of California at Berkeley. The Rao Prize was established by C. R. and Bhargavi Rao to honor and recognize outstanding and influential innovations in the theory and practice of mathematical statistics, international leadership in directing statistics research, and pioneering contributions by a recognized leader in the field of statistics.

Location

The one-day conference will be held on the University Park campus of Penn State in 100 Life Sciences; see the Penn State campus map for more details.

Program

• 8:30-8:45 Registration (Tea/Coffee)
• 8:45-9:00 Welcoming Addresses
  
  • Bruce Lindsay, Head, Department of Statistics, PSU
  • C.R. Rao, Eberly Professor Emeritus, PSU
• 9:00-10:00 Invited Lecture, I (Session Chair: Dave Hunter)
  
  • Speaker: C. F. Jeff Wu, Georgia Institute of Technology
    Lecture: Minimum-Energy Designs: From Nanostructure Synthesis to Sequential Optimization
    Abstract   Slides
• 10:00-10:30 Tea/Coffee Break
• 10:30-11:30 Invited Lecture, II (Session Chair: Jia Li)
  
  • Speaker: Debashis Ghosh, Penn State University
    Lecture: Kernel Machine Methods in Computational Biology
    Abstract   Slides
• 11:30-1:00 Lunch
• 1:00-1:15 Presentation of the 2009 Rao Prize
  
  • Introduction and Citation
  • Presentation of the Prize by Daniel Larson, Dean of the Eberly College of Science
• 1:15-2:15 Keynote Address (Session Chair: Aleksandra Slavkovic)
  
  • Speaker: Peter Bickel, University of California - Berkeley
    Lecture: Dealing With Large Observation Dimension p in Relation to Data Size n of the Same or Smaller Order
    Abstract   Slides
• 2:15-2:30 Tea/Coffee Break
• 2:30-3:30 Invited Lectures, III (Session Chair: Bing Li)
  
  • Speaker: Jianqing Fan, Princeton University
    Lecture: Penalized Likelihood with NP-Dimensionality
    Abstract   Slides
• 3:30-5:00 Graduate Student Poster Presentations (Session Chair: Runze Li)
  
  • Poster Abstracts
    
    • Andreas Artemiou:   An Inequality for Principal Components and Regression
    • K. Sham Bhat:   Inferring Likelihoods and Climate System Characteristics from Climate Models and Multiple Tracers
    • Zhe Chen:   A Hierarchical Bayesian Dynamic Model: The Case of Customer Satisfaction and Shareholder Value Association
    • Yeojin Chung:   A Multivariate Likelihood-Tuned Density Estimator and Modal Inference
    • Ruth Hummel:   Using a Stepping Algorithm to Fit an Exponential Family Random Graph Model for a Biological Network
    • Bo Kai:   Local Rank Inference for Varying Coefficient Models
    • Kion Kim:   Recent History Functional Linear Model for Longitudinal Data
    • Min Hee Kim:   Order Thresholding
    • Min Kyung Kim:   On Dimension-Folding of Matrix- or Array-Valued Statistical Objects
    • Esra Kurum:   Estimation in Covariate-Adjusted Nonlinear Regression Models
    • Hyang Min Lee:   Variable Selection for Clustering
    • Juyoun Lee:   Sampling Tables Given a Set of Conditionals
    • Megan Romer:   The Statistical Analysis of Monotone Incomplete Multivariate Normal Data
    • Jianping Sun:   Composite Likelihood: Issues in Efficiency
    • Huei-Wen Teng:   Bayesian Quadrature: State-Price Density Estimation
    • Mina Yoo:   Assessment of Measurement Agreement for Functional Longitudinal Data
    • Lu Zhang:   Regime Switching Stochastic Volatility and Correlation
• 5:00-6:30 Reception at the Willaman Gateway in the Life Sciences Building

Registration

Local attendees may register for the conference by signing up with Jennifer Parkes in the department's main office. All others who wish to attend may register for the conference on the morning of May 22, 2009.

Contact

For further information, please contact a member of the organizing committe:

• Bonnie Cain
• Barbara Freed
• Jennifer Parkes
• Donald Richards
• Laurie Roan
• Marina Tempelman

A Satellite Meeting at the Center for Comparative Genomics and Bioinformatics

Thursday, May 21, 2009, at 2:30-5:00 p.m., on the 5th floor of Wartik Lab

Organizer: Francesca Chiaromonte

Program

• 2:30-3:00 Peter Bickel, "Energy models for binding site affinity using SELEX data"
• 3:00-3:30 Ross Hardison, "Functional and evolutionary genomics of erythroid gene regulation"
• 3:30-4:00 Erika Kvikstad, "Ride the wavelet: a multi-scale analysis of genomic context flanking small insertions and deletions"
• 4:00-4:30 Yu Zhang, "False positive control in genome-wide ChIP-chip tiling arrays"
• 4:30-5:00 Guru Ananda, "An introduction to GALAXI"