CANSSI director, Donald Estep, on a mission to learn about Canadian statistics and inferential data science

As a newcomer to Canada and Canadian universities, Don decided to undertake a travel campaign to visit universities across Canada. The goal is to develop an understanding of the environment in which Canadian statisticians and data scientists conduct research and training and the pressures on their home departments and institutions that affect that environment. Don also engages the CANSSI community to discuss what CANSSI is doing well, where it can do well, and how it should evolve in the future. 

During his visits, he has met with students, faculty, and administration. Don says, “The Canadian statistical and inferential data science community is under very significant stress right now—a victim of its own success. But everywhere I go, people have been unfailingly warm, friendly, and engaging. I have come to understand that CANSSI is special because it reflects the qualities of the community it supports.”

Don will continue his travel campaign, intermingled with preparation of the proposal for the NSERC Institute competition.

CANSSI Graduate Student Exchange Scholarships

We are excited to announce the new CANSSI Graduate Student Exchange Scholarships program, which supports graduate students who wish to undertake an extended visit to a CANSSI member university. The program is designed to foster acquisition of new knowledge and skill sets, exposure to new areas of research and application, co-discovery of new statistics, and co-supervision of thesis research. These competitive scholarships are available to master’s and PhD students who are currently enrolled in a degree program at a CANSSI member university. Details can be found on our website.

Update on the Collaborative Research Team program and call for letters of intent

The Collaborative Research Team (CRT) program is the flagship activity of CANSSI. The mandate of the CRT program is to foster research and training interactions that span disciplines and institutions in order to tackle fundamental statistics and inferential data science research that has impact in science, engineering, health, and society. Wildly successful since its introduction, the CRT program emphasizes the cocreation of knowledge, the leveraging of Canada’s statistical and data science expertise, and the synergy achieved by embedding partnership into projects at their inception. CRT projects are awarded approximately $180,000 over a three-year period to support HQP, research interactions of the CRT team, and communication and dissemination of research results.

We have made a significant change to the application process to reduce the up-front investment of time in the competition.

The annual CRT competition has two parts: Submission of a Letter of Intent (LOI) followed, upon invitation, by submission of full proposals. We have shifted the ingredients of the LOI and the full proposal so that the LOI focuses on the proposed research and the training of HQP, leaving details of project finance and management to the full proposal.

Learn more about these changes online or contact us at info@canssi.ca with any questions.

We’re pleased to announce two new CRTs starting in 2020.

Laura Cowen (University of Victoria), Simon Bonner (Western University) and Saman Muthukumarama (University of Manitoba) will lead a project called Addressing Spatial and Computational Issues in Integrated Analysis of Modern Ecological Data.

David Haziza (Université de Montréal) and Changbao Wu (University of Waterloo) will lead a project called Modern Techniques for Survey Sampling and Complex Data.

Congratulations to both teams!

CANSSI Annual General Meeting—Save the date

This year’s AGM will take place at Carleton University on Saturday, May 30. Each member institute is invited to send a representative to learn what’s new at CANSSI and to vote on any motions including the appointment of new board members.

Upcoming deadlines: 

• SAMSI Undergrad Workshop Applications for the May 18-22 Workshop—March 26, 2020
• Call for CRT LOIs—April 30, 2020
• Graduate Student Exchange Scholarships—April 30, 2020
• Call for Workshop Proposals—June 15, 2020

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