Free SAS Webinars

SAS is offering several free webinars, some of the topics for February and March include:

• Have your Cake and Eat it Too - Using Open Source with SAS
• Analytics 101: Part 1
• Are Data Privacy and Customer Experiences an Oxymoron?
• The Data Scientist Learning Journey: AI and Machine Learning

Use the following link to view their upcoming schedule and to register.

https://www.sas.com/en_us/webinars.html

ASA Statistical Learning & Data Science Conference (SLDS 2020)

SLDS 2020 (asaslds.github.io/SLDS2020/) is again a joint event with the Section on Nonparametric Statistics of ASA, which will be held in Irvine, California on May 27-29, 2020.

This year, we are rolling out a Student Paper Competition sponsored by LinkedIn, associated with a contributed poster session (with a poster award sponsored by Two Sigma). The deadline for submission is February 15th, 2020.

Submission form: forms.gle/P5QuwL41JgzJgkMS9 (Deadline 2/15/2020)

SLDS conferences bring together the vibrant community at the interface of Statistics and Data Science, with a lot of networking and learning opportunities. SLDS 2020 will also feature
Keynote talks from Deepak Agarwal (LinkedIn), Regina Liu (Rutgers) and Jane-Ling Wang (UC Davis)
More than 47 invited sessions organized by the SLDS 2020 program committee
Invited short courses (May 26, 2020) on Deep Learning, AI and Precision Medicine, offered by Annie Qu (UC Irvine), Xiao Wang (Purdue), Edgar Dobriban (Penn), Haoda Fu (Eli Lilly). Seats are limited.
Lunch panels will offer opportunities for discussing challenges and opportunities faced by statisticians in light of data science.
And much much more ...

Find out more at asaslds.github.io/SLDS2020/.

Registration and Hotel reservation with a group rate are both open. We reserved a limited block of rooms at the conference venue, Hyatt Regency Newport Beach. We look forward to seeing you'all in Irvine!

Upcoming Conferences - Travel Funding Available

Dr. Kelly Bodwin has put together the following list of upcoming conferences. The department would like to encourage you to consider submitting your work to conferences. These conferences are also a great chance to meet people in the field, and they frequently lead to job and grad school connections. 

The Statistics department does have funding available to support student travel. Funds are limited, so if you are considering attending a conference please contact Katie Doctor (kdoctor@calpoly.edu) in the Statistics Department office ASAP to discuss the possibility of receiving funding.

UseR
July 7-10
St. Louis, MO
Submission Deadline: Feb 3rd
This is the main annual R-focused conference.
For this one, I don't know if they do posters or not - you would submit an abstract here and see what happens!
Make sure your abstract emphasizes the R aspects of your project.

Knowledge, Data, and Discovery
August 22-27
San Diego, CA
Submission Deadline: Feb 13
This is a very well-respected conference for computer science, statistics, data science, etc.
You would probably want to submit in the "Applied Data Science" category, in the "Evidential" sub-category.
This is a fairly competitive conference, with no poster format option, so don't be discouraged if you are not accepted.

SDSS 2020
June 3-6
Pittsburgh, PA
Submission Deadline: March 10
This is a smaller, data-science focused conference. Two of last year's Senior Project students attended.
I would suggest submitting an e-poster.

Women in Statistics and Data Science
October 1-3
Pittsburgh, PA
Submission Deadline: April 2
This conference is similar to SDSS, but with a focus on female and nonbinary presenters and attendees.
Male-identifying folks are welcome to attend and sometimes present, but you are less likely to be selected.

Joint Statistical Meetings
August 1-6
Philadelphia, PA
Submission Deadline: April 16th
This is the largest stat conference very year. It is fun to attend because of the variety, but it is less fun to present at because there are SO many talks, attendance is typically low.
For this one, you could reasonably submit for a short talk rather than only a poster - they may "downgrade" you to a poster anyways, but it can't hurt to try!

WUSS 2020
September 9-11
San Diego, CA
Submission Deadline: July 19

This conference was previously focused on SAS, but is now opening up to all statistical software.
As a bonus, Dr. Glanz is a director for this conference, and I will be in attendance

Upcoming Hackathon - SLO Hacks

SLO Hacks 2020, Cal Poly's largest student-run hackathon, is happening on February 28-March 1! If you’ve ever wanted to create an app, design your dream game, or practice your pitching skills, this is the event for you. We accept all majors and skill levels, and hope that you’re excited for 36 hours of making your ideas come to life.

We'll also have a lot of opportunities to network and even find an internship/full-time job with our corporate sponsors through workshops, sponsor booths, and mentorship.

Did we mention that there’s FREE food, drinks, snacks, and swag during the event?

If this sounds interesting to you, apply at https://www.slohacks.com/apply! Applications close on February 7th.

Check out the event page here: http://bit.ly/SLOHacks2020FB

Skilled in UI/UX design, app and web development, hardware, graphic design, or data science?

Sign up to be a MENTOR for the event here-> http://bit.ly/SH2020MentorApp

Reminder: Statistics Project Competition (USPROC)

Are you working on a cool class project or other project? How about entering in the Undergraduate Statistics Project Competition sponsored by the Consortium for the Advancement of Undergraduate Statistics Education and the American Statistical Association? The 2nd deadline is approaching:

• 26 Jun 2020 - 2nd submission deadline (for Winter/Spring 2020 research activity)

For more information visit https://www.causeweb.org/usproc/ 

UG Research Experience Opportunity @ Valparaiso University

Join Prof. Karl Schmitt and Prof. Ruth Wertz at Valparaiso University in a data science Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) during May 18th - July 24th (10 weeks).

We are looking for two undergraduate research students to analyse survey data from introductory data science courses (offered at Brown University, Smith College, and Valparaiso University) using text mining, machine learning, and statistical analyses. The research students will conduct typical text-mining activities such as scrapping data, cleaning, and processing using natural language processing techniques. The results are expected to influence the design and instruction of data science courses.

Each student will receive a stipend of $4,000 for their participation in the program. Travel expenses up to $500 to Valparaiso will be covered. Housing will be provided by Valparaiso University. We also anticipate supporting student travel to conferences to present the outcomes of the REU research (either over the summer or later in the year). Students will participate in a number of social and research-related activities with other research students on campus.

Eligibility: Only US citizens or permanent residents are eligible for funding. Participants must be undergraduate students at the time of participation.

Preference will be given to students with experience in: Programming (preferably Python, though R or other languages acceptable) Introductory Statistics (or more)

Beneficial (but not required): Experience/Course Work in Machine Learning (especially natural language processing)

For more information visit

https://www.mathprograms.org/db/programs/925