The Isba Bulletin

I would first like to thank Mike West for his service as past president. Among many other issues Mike has provided invaluable service to ISBA by revising and reviving our IT infrastructure. Many of you must have already used the nifty new on-line membership service. The elected new officers for 2010 and the new editors were already mentioned in the last Bulletin. In addition to these new officers I welcome our new 2011 program chair Igor Prünster. Since joining the program council in January Igor has already worked hard to help with the selection of the ISBA travel awards. Thanks! Another new appointment is David Dunson as the new chair of the Membership Committee. We will soon begin the process to organize the 2011 ISBA elections, starting with the formation of the nomination committee. As laid out in the ISBA bylaws the nomination committee is chaired by the past president. All members are invited to make suggestions for membership in the nomination committee. Please forward suggestions to me. In the past years it has occasionally been proposed to initiate sections in ISBA. The constitution provides for the possibility of sections and the policy on sections lays out a very simple process to launch sections. I believe that the formation of sections could be a wonderful opportunity to keep ISBA relevant for our members, and to ensure that ISBA activities continue to reflect the forefront of current developments in Bayesian analysis. A specific proposal for an ISBA section on Bayesian nonparametrics (BNP) is currently being prepared by some members. There is a long running series of workshops that loosely defines a community of researchers with related interests. The process to form a new section is amazingly simple. Formally, all that is needed is a petition by 30 members to propose the bylaws and initial officers of a proposed section. The ISBA Board considers the proposal and votes on the proposal. That’s all. I hope that ISBA/BNP will be followed by other section proposals. A natural focus point is any established series of workshops or other events. For example, for ISBA/BNP the organization of the BNP workshops is the natural purpose and activity of the new section. Other exciting events in the upcoming year are several meetings organized and co-sponsored by ISBA. Alex Schmidt is summarizing the many upcoming meetings elsewhere in this Bulletin. If you are. . .Continued on page 2.