3rd IIA - PennState Astrostatistics School in Bangalore

What is this all about?
The 3rd IIA - PennState Astrostatistics School
The Indian Institute of Astrophysics and the Center for Astrostatistics, Pennsylvania State University (USA) are jointly organising an 8-day school in fundamental statistical inference as applicable to astrophysical problems for practising astrophysicists. This is the third school in the series.

Motivation
Given that empirical astrophysics is an observational science, the importance of rigorous application of statistical methods to astrophysical data analysis cannot be overstated. Moreover, empirical astrophysics research has seen a paradigm shift in recent years in that it routinely involves data mining of large multiwavelength data sets, requiring complex automated processes that must invoke a very diverse set of statistical techniques. Our Astrostatistics Schools are designed to meet this new challenge by providing a strong conceptual foundation in modern statistics as well as a repertoire of state-of-the-art statistical tools applicable to astrophysical problems.

Content
The school is designed for all levels of practising astrophysicists wishing to enhance their grasp of the application of statistics to their research. The content of the school will broadly follow the pattern of the previous schools (2007, 2008). In addition to lectures, there will be a heavy emphasis on hands-on tutorials using software tools implemented in the public-domain multi-platform R computing environment, which, besides being open-source, is the current standard in research-level statistical computation. There will be opportunities for participants to brainstorm with the faculty of the school on their research problems which involves the application of statisticial methods. There will be a session where papers from the astrophysics literature will be discussed.

Organisers
The Indian Institute of Astrophysics, located in Bangalore, is a premier institution devoted to research in astrophysics and other allied areas in physics. The Center for Astrostatistics, Pennsylvania State University (USA), is an interdisciplinary research centre at the interface of astrophysics and statistics, where researchers from both disciplines collaborate to share and develop methodologies in order to meet the modern challenges of empirical astrophysics.

Venue
The school will be held on the picturesque campus of the Vainu Bappu Observatory (VBO), a field station of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA). This campus is located near the village of Kavalur in the Javadi Hills in Tamil Nadu. The nearest train stations are Vaniambadi and Jolarpettai, from where road transport to the Observatory will be arranged by IIA. The Observatory campus is about a three-and-a-half hour drive from the IIA-Bangalore campus, from where also, road transport to VBO will be arranged by IIA.

Costs and Financial Support
Board, lodging and transport from Bangalore or the nearest train stations to the Observatory will be covered by the school for all the participants. Participants are required to find their own travel funds to travel to Bangalore or these train stations. However, some limited travel funds are available for deserving participants from institutions within India, especially from the university sector.

How to Apply
Participation in the school is open to practising astrophysicists at all levels. The number of participants will be limited to about 30. An application may be submitted on-line and this is the strongly preferred method. If there are difficulties with this, applications filled in the prescribed downloadable form (MS_Word/ OpenOffice/ Text/ pdf), may be submitted via email to astrostat@iiap.res.in . Particular attention must be paid to demonstrating the relevance of the school to the applicant's research. The deadline for receiving the completed application forms is the 25th March, 2010. In addition, applicants who are yet to obtain a Ph.D. degree should arrange to have two confidential recommendations from persons who can judge the applicant's academic abilities and the relevance of the school to the applicant's research. These recommendations, also on the prescribed recommendation form (MS_Word/ OpenOffice/ Text/ pdf), should be emailed separately by the recommenders to astrostat@iiap.res.in by the 25th March, 2010. Post-Ph.D. applicants need not arrange for recommendation letters but must attach their curriculum vitae and list of research publications to the completed application form. Those that participated in the first or second IIA-PennState Astrostatistics schools (2007 or 2008) are discouraged from applying for the 3rd school.

The Co-ordinators
The IIA-PennState Astrostatistics School
The Indian Institute of Astrophysics
Bangalore 560 034

Website Details: http://www.iiap.res.in/astrostat/

Indi Proff