Program Chair’s Role

The Program Chair’s main responsibility is the invited session program. The Program Chair may find it useful to appoint a Co-Chair, especially in the odd years, in which there are 34 IMS sessions to be filled.

Contributed Papers Chair

The IMS Program Secretary may appoint a Contributed Papers Chair. Suggestions from the Program Chair for this role are welcome.

JSM Program Committee

The Program Chair(s) and Contributed Papers Chair will serve on the JSM Program Committee.

Number of IMS Allocated Sessions

Even years (not an IMS Annual Meeting year)  11 total sessions: these include the following already allocated sessions:

• Medallion lectures (0-3 sessions),
• Wahba lecture (1 session) and
• AOAS lecture (session).

Odd years (IMS Annual Meeting year) 34 total sessions – these include the following already allocated sessions:

• Medallion lectures (2-4 sessions),
• Wald lectures (2-3 sessions),
• Wahba lecture (1 session),
• rotating Named lecture – Rietz, LeCam, Blackwell or Neyman (1 session),
• AOS lecture (1 session),
• Brown Awardee Session (1 session),
• IMS New Researcher Invited Session – features new researchers as the majority of the speakers and/or discussants (1 session) and
• Presidential Address (1 session).

Competition and Call for submissions

When the JSM is the IMS Annual Meeting (in odd years), approximately half of the invited sessions (that are not already allocated to special lectures) should be competitive. The Program Chair should specifically invite proposals from IMS Groups and IMS China.

Subcommittee to select the competitive invited sessions

The designated IMS Program Chair shall form a program committee of 5 members to call for, evaluate and select proposals for invited sessions. This subcommittee shall include someone who is a new researcher.

Abstract submission

All abstracts must be submitted online at the ASA website. All abstracts submitted for an IMS session will automatically be forwarded to the Program Chair (if it is an invited paper) or to the Contributed Papers Chair (if it is a contributed paper). The Program Chair needs to inform ASA where the IMS abstracts should be automatically forwarded.

Money for Speakers

Medallion and Named Lecturers are reimbursed for $2000 for travel expenses plus the cost of registration.  Allowable reimbursable expenses for the Medallion, Wald, Rietz, Neyman, and Wahba lecturers also include services needed to produce a virtual presentation.

For all other invited speakers, there is no IMS money regardless of the circumstances. When the meetings are joint sometimes the joint partnership has money. It does not hurt to ask.

At JSM’s non-statistician speakers can get complimentary registration. The same holds for the meetings with ENAR: see the ENAR help file. You must reach out to the main program chair for this information.

Medallion and Named Lectures (Wald, Blackwell, Neyman, Rietz, LeCam)

The IMS Program Chair appoints a chair for each Medallion Lecture plus an optional 5-10 minute introduction by an expert. We recommend asking the speakers for suggestions. You can have two Medallion lecturers in one session, but not more than two.

Scheduling

Try to work with the other societies’ Program Chairs in the scheduling of the invited sessions. It is particularly important if there are two sessions that compete heavily for the same audience.

Participant Guidelines

Be aware of the participant guidelines. The main rule you need to be aware of here is the one paper, one chair rule. Most importantly, an individual can do only ONE of the following:

• Present an invited paper
• Present a contributed paper or poster
• Serve as a discussant, panelist or other special participant in one invited OR one special contributed session

Roundtable and Speaker Luncheons

At the JSM we can organize Roundtable and Speaker Luncheons. The Roundtable luncheon submissions are due to the ASA office in early February. They are very popular and it would be nice to have an IMS Roundtable. You should speak with the JSM Program Chair to see if all proposals are accepted or if not, info on the selection process: https://ww2.amstat.org/meetings/jsm/2019/beontheprogram.cfm