Qatar hosted the 12th Islamic Countries Conference on Statistical Sciences. Shahjahan Khan (Australia), Ali S Hadi (Egypt), and Ayman Bakleezi (Qatar) report on the conference:

Qatar is the first country in the Arabian Gulf to host any statistics conference organized by the Islamic Countries Society of Statistical Sciences (ISOSS). The 12th biennial Islamic Countries Conference on Statistical Sciences (ICCS-12) was held at the Qatar University (QU), Doha from 19–22 December 2012. The President and Vice Chancellor of Qatar University, Professor Sheikha Al Misnad, as the chief guest, formally opened the conference in the Ibne Khaldoon Hall. The session was addressed among others by the President of ISOSS, Prof Ali S Hadi, and the Chair of the Local Organising Committee (LOC), Prof Ayman Bakleezi from QU. A representative of the Qatar Statistics Authority of the Government of Qatar discussed various statistical activities and programs to meet the growing need and improve the official statistics in the country.

The scientific program committee accepted 236 papers for presentation but only 151 papers were presented by delegates from 32 countries from all parts of the world. In addition, keynote addresses were delivered by Munir Ahmed (Pakistan), Edward Wegman (USA), Ehsan Soofi (USA), Mohammad Hanif Mian (Pakistan), Abdelhameed El-Shaarawi (Canada/Egypt), Aman Ullah (USA), Shahjahan Khan (Australia), and Mohammad Al Saleh (Jordan). Unfortunately a number of potential presenters could not participate in the conference, due to visa restrictions. The largest number of delegates came from Pakistan. The LOC was able to support a good number of international participants through free accommodation in Qatar University guest house.

The conference dinner was held in a local restaurant with attractive Arabian cuisine. In the last day of the conference a city tour was organized to visit some of the attractive places in Doha, such as the Katara resort and Souk Waqif (market).

The winners of the ISOSS gold medal for this year, Professor Dato’ Wira Dr Jamil Bin Osman of Malaysia, Dr Saleh Omer Badahdah of Saudi Arabia, and Prof Ayman Bakleezi of Qatar University, received their Awards from the chief guest of the opening session.
The business session considered proposals from Indonesia, Malaysia, Tunisia, Oman and United Arab Emirates (UAE) to host the next ISOSS conference. Tentatively it was agreed that ICCS-13 will be held in the UAE in 2014. Due to growing interest in holding conferences in Islamic countries, it was proposed that in addition to the biennial Islamic Countries Conference on Statistical Sciences, ISOSS would form a partnership to hold joint conferences with other societies in appropriate venues.

Like in the previous ISOSS conferences, the electronic version of the Proceedings consisting of papers presented in the conference is accessible from the ISOSS website and the printed version is expected be published in the near future.

The conference re-elected Ali S Hadi, Distinguished Research Professor of the American University in Cairo, Egypt as the ISOSS President.


From left: Shahjahan Khan (Australia), Edward Wegman (USA), Sheikha Al-Misnad (Qatar), and ISOSS President Ali Hadi (Egypt).