Linbo Wang and Dehan Kong report:

The 23rd Meeting of New Researchers in Statistics and Probability (NRC) convened at the University of Toronto Scarborough from August 2–5, 2023: see https://sites.google.com/site/linbowangpku/nrc-2023. The conference was attended by 69 emerging researchers and 13 senior speakers and panelists, hailing from the United States, Canada, China, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Iran and Singapore.

The conference kicked off on Wednesday with a relaxed evening where attendees mingled and played board games. The scientific program on Thursday spotlighted two plenary talks by recent Tweedie Award recipients: Jonathan Niles-Weed addressed statistical and computational challenges in optimal transport, and Chao Gao provided insights on robust statistics. The day was further enriched by two-minute flash talks from poster presenters, followed by a poster session. We then had our first panel discussion on mentoring, led by Jianqing Fan and Michael Stein. Thursday evening treated attendees to a banquet, underscored by an enlightening speech from Peter Bühlmann.

Friday was filled with invited talks and panel discussions. Paul Fearnhead delved into the problem of testing for a change in mean after changepoint detection, and Jianqing Fan offered insights into ranking inferences based on multiway comparisons. These talks alternated with two panel discussions on funding and publishing. In the funding panel, NSF program officer Yulia Gel and NSERC evaluation group member Leilei Zeng shared their advice for early-career researchers, with Jianqing Fan and Nancy Reid offering their experience and some lessons. The publishing panel facilitated a dynamic dialogue with editors from top statistical journals. On Friday evening, participants enjoyed the gift of time, with many of them joining organized activities such as card games, table tennis and karaoke.

The final day of the conference began with a thought-provoking talk by Peter Bühlmann on causal-inspired and robust statistical machine learning. This was followed by a panel discussion on collaboration, where participants gleaned insights from the experiences and anecdotes shared by Yulia Gel, Xuming He, Dylan Small, and Michael Stein.
This year’s meeting was co-sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, the University of Toronto Scarborough, the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute, and its Ontario Regional Centre (CANSSI–Ontario), along with the University of Toronto Department of Statistical Sciences. Moreover, we benefited from the generous administrative support of the Department of Computer and Mathematical Sciences and the Conference, Meeting & Event Planning Center at the University of Toronto Scarborough.

Participants at the IMS New Researchers Conference 2023

[We’ll bring you information about next year’s NRC soon!]