Sydney, Australia: Sunday 10 to Friday 15 July, 2005 Pre-workshop tutorial: Sunday 10 July 20TH IWSM STATISTICAL SOLUTIONS TO MODERN PROBLEMS FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS The International Workshop on Statistical Modelling is an annual conference organised by the Statistical Modelling Society. The workshop concentrates on the various aspects of statistical modelling, including theoretical developments, applications and computational methods. Papers motivated by real practical problems are encouraged, but theoretical contributions addressing problems of practical importance or related to software developments are also welcome. See http://www.statmod.org for more about the history and philosophy of the workshops. The 20th IWSM will be the first to be held in the southern hemisphere. The scientific programme is characterised by having invited lectures and a pre-workshop tutorial, contributed papers, posters and software demonstrations. Contributed papers should be suitable for a 20 minute oral presentation or a poster and focus on motivation, statement of key results and conclusions, and emphasise examples, wherever possible. For this workshop, submissions are especially encouraged in the following areas: statistical genomics, gene expression, environment and climate change, large or complex data sets, modern Bayesian methods, mixed effects models and interval- censored data. More generally papers are encouraged which illustrate statistical responses to modern issues, such as the genomics revolution or environmental climate change, or which illustrate how modern problems involving large and complex datasets are changing the face of statistics. The Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute Symposium, "Recent Advances in Biostatistics, Bioinformatics and Markov Chain Monte Carlo", will be scheduled immediately before the IWSM at a nearby venue in Sydney, see http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~scott/symposium . INVITED SPEAKERS A programme of five plenary speakers is planned emphasising the conference themes. Confirmed speakers include Noel Cressie (Ohio State University), Simon Tavaré (Cambridge University and University of Southern California) and Matt Wand (University of New South Wales). A one-day short course on "Mixed Models" will be given by Brian Cullis, Alison Smith and Ari Verbyla on the Sunday before the start of the conference proper. STUDENTS Students are encouraged to attend the workshop. The programme is designed to allow for discussions and interchange between junior and senior scientists. Awards will be given for best student talk and for best student poster. PROGRAMME To maintain the focus of the conference and to promote interaction between all delegates, all talks will be the presented in the same lecture hall. There will be no parallel sessions. Papers should be submitted as extended abstracts of 3-4 pages and should indicate whether they are to be presented orally or as a poster. All submitted abstracts will be refereed by the Scientific Committee. Due to the limited number of oral presentations, some authors who have submitted an abstract for oral presentation may be asked to prepare a poster presentation instead. There will be dedicated poster sessions to ensure that the posters get plenty of attention and to give presenters full opportunity to interact with conference attendees. Abstracts (3-4 pages) should be submitted no later than January 31, 2005. Notification of acceptance will be mailed by March 14, 2005. (Early confirmation of acceptance is available by special request.) All authors will be given the opportunity to contribute full papers which will be refereed and printed in a proceedings volume that will be ready at the beginning of the conference. The final manuscript (up to 8 pages) ready for reproduction should reach the organizers by April 15, 2005. The workshop language is English. SOCIAL PROGRAMME The workshop will feature a full social programme including a welcome, excursion and conference dinner. SCIENTIFIC PROGRAMME COMMITTEE Murray Aitkin (Melbourne, Australia), Melanie Bahlo (Melbourne, Australia), Brian Cullis (Wagga Wagga, Australia), Paul Eilers (Leiden, The Netherlands), John Hinde (Galway, Ireland), Herwig Friedl (Graz, Austria), Irene Hudson (Christchurch, New Zealand), Emmanuel Lesaffre (Leuven, Belgium), Kenan Matawie (Sydney, Australia), Meei Ng (Melbourne, Australia), David Nott (Sydney, Australia), Alicia Oshlack (Melbourne, Australia), Gordon Smyth (Melbourne, Australia, Chair), Bill Venables (Brisbane, Australia), Ari Verbyla (Adelaide, Australia) LOCAL ORGANISING COMMITTEE Carmel Coady (Sydney, Australia), Peter Dunn (Queensland, Australia), Andrew Francis (Sydney, Australia), Richard Gerlach (Newcastle, Australia), Ravi Jaganathan (Sydney, Australia), Kenan Matawie (Sydney, Australia, Chair), Robert Mellor (Sydney, Australia), Shelton Peiris (Sydney, Australia), Marco Reale (Christchurch, New Zealand), Gordon Smyth (Melbourne, Australia) VENUE Swiss-Grand Resort & Spa on Bondi Beach in Sydney. http://www.swissgrand.com.au FURTHER INFORMATION Details about registration for the workshop, instructions for authors and further information will be available from the workshop homepage http://www.uws.edu.au/iwsm2005/ DEADLINES January 31, 2005: Submission of abstracts (3-4 pages) March 14, 2005: Notification of acceptance March 31, 2005: Last day for early registration April 15, 2005: Submission of final manuscripts Please note: hotel reservations made after 31 March 2005 cannot be guaranteed. CONTACT INFORMATION Dr Kenan Matawie Senior Lecturer, School of Quantitative Methods and Mathematical Sciences, University of Western Sydney Locked Bag 1797, Penrith South DC NSW 1797, Australia Tel: +61-2-96859460 Fax: +61-2-96859339 e-mail: k.matawie@uws.edu.au Dr Gordon Smyth Senior Research Scientist, Bioinformatics, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, 1G Royal Parade, Parkville, Vic 3050, Australia Tel:+61-3-93452326 Fax +61-3- 93470852 e-mail: smyth@wehi.edu.au