CANSSI AGM and Town Hall on NSERC Discovery Institute Support Program

This year, we’ll be having our first ever virtual AGM on Thursday, June 18, 2020. It will take place online at 9:00 PDT (12:00 EDT) and will be followed by a Town Hall Meeting at 10:00 PDT (13:00 PDT).

All CANSSI member institutions are allowed to send one member representative to vote at the AGM, but anyone is welcome to attend.

The Town Hall session is also open to anyone. Statisticians are encouraged to attend to learn about the CANSSI proposal to the NSERC Discovery Institute Support Program. NSERC has opened the competition for institute funding. For the first time, CANSSI will apply in a head-to-head competition with the mathematics institutes (PIMS, BIRS, Fields, CRM, AARMS) as well as the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA).

Learn more about the Annual General Meeting and the Town Hall here.

Hope to see you there!

CANSSI Strategic Retreat Report—Planning for the DIS Proposal

CANSSI held a strategic retreat from March 6–8, 2020. Participants from across Canada attended. The goal of the retreat was to bring together a cross-section of the Canadian statistics and inferential data science community to consider CANSSI current and future operations in preparation for the NSERC Discovery Institutes Support (DIS) competition. The intention is to submit a proposal for CANSSI that has a strong grassroots foundation in the Canadian statistics and inferential data science community. The retreat was a key step in fulfilling this goal. The full report (available online) is intended to capture the ideas, advice, questions, and issues that arise out of the discussions in the retreat.

CANSSI Strategic Retreat, March 2020

CANSSI Rapid Response Program—COVID-19

CANSSI is requesting proposals to the CANSSI Rapid Response Program (CRRP) that address issues related to COVID-19. Learn more about the program and how to apply here.

Some exciting projects that have already been approved include:

• Estimating the Number of Hidden COVID-19 Cases led by Laura Cowen, Junling Ma, and Pauline van den Driessche at the University of Victoria
• Perfectionnement de l’estimation des matrices de contacts sociaux pour la modélisation de l’épidémie de COVID-19 au Canada led by Alexandre Bureau, Mélanie Drolet, and Marc Brisson at Université Laval
• Host Genetics for SARS-CoV-2 Severity and Infection: Power and Control led by Lloyd Elliott at Simon Fraser University
• Statistical Methods for COVID-19 Mortality Forecasting at the Small-Area Level led by Jeffrey Rosenthal and Patrick Brown at the University of Toronto

Read more about these projects on our website.

New CANSSI Collaborative Research Team Projects for 2020

Two new Collaborative Research Teams (CRT) kicked off their projects in 2020.

• Addressing Spatial and Computational Issues in Integrated Analysis of Modern Ecological Data: The team leaders are Laura Cowen, University of Victoria; Simon Bonner, Western University; and Saman Muthukumarana, University of Manitoba.
• Modern Techniques for Survey Sampling and Complex Data: The team leaders are David Haziza, University of Montreal and Changbao Wu, University of Montreal.

Learn more about all of our current CRTs here.

Distinguished Visitor Program Deadline—July 31, 2020

Looking to have a leading international statistical scientist at your university? CANSSI has a program to help fund that. Your distinguished visitor should plan to give a 1-hour lecture for a general audience in addition to a scientific talk, and should meet with researchers and graduate students during the visit. Find out how to apply here.