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2006 Joint Research Conference on Statistics in Quality,
Industry and Technology
How It All Began
The creation of the Spring Research Conference was initiated in 1991,
when Steve Vardeman (Iowa State University), then Chair of SPES, and the
section's Executive Committee were exploring possible new initiatives
for SPES. The well-established and successful Fall Technical Conference,
jointly sponsored by SPES and two sections of the American Society for
Quality (Control), was aimed primarily at practitioners. There was no
corresponding conference aimed at stimulating research in areas of
interest to SPES. Growing recognition of the unique and challenging
broad range of statistical problems in the physical and engineering
sciences indicated that such a conference would well serve SPES members,
the statistical profession, and users of statistical methods in industry
and technology.
A model for such a conference was provided by the very successful IMS-sponsored
Special Topics Meeting on Industrial Statistics held in Philadelphia
during June 1991. This meeting, initiated and organized by Jeff Wu
(University of Michigan, then at the University of Waterloo), attracted
a large number of senior and young researchers and seemed to fill an
important need. Thus, Vardeman suggested the idea of a joint research
conference sponsored by SPES and IMS and had invited several people,
including Vijay Nair (University of Michigan, then at Bell Labs) and
Jeff Wu, to the SPES Executive Meeting to initiate discussions.
Another model for the SRC was the Quality and Productivity Research
Conference, sponsored by the Q&P Section of ASA. It was felt, however,
that there was a need for a statistical research conference that
addressed the broad scope of problems arising in the physical and
engineering sciences beyond the Q&P realms.
Subsequent to the SPES initiation of the idea of the SRC, it took a
couple of years and much energy and effort before the idea became a
reality. Vijay Nair led the conference organization and planning effort
and developed the goals, structure, and blueprint for the conference and
also handled all the negotiations with IMS and SPES. The conference was
named the ``Spring Research Conference on Statistics in Industry and
Technology," both to contrast it with and to establish its parallel
nature to the ``Fall Technical Conference,'' and to describe the broad
nature of the research areas to be addressed.
As stated in the conference charter, the goal of the conference is to
promote cross-disciplinary research in statistical methods in
engineering, science and technology. Its main purpose is to stimulate
interactions among statisticians, researchers in the application areas,
and industrial practitioners. The conference is a forum where
participants can describe current research efforts, identify important
problems and areas of application, and formulate future research
directions.
The inaugural conference was held in Chapel Hill, NC, in June, 1994, and
there have been annual meetings since then. The long-term welfare and
finances of the conference are handled by a Management Committee. The
members of the first Management Committee were Vijay Nair (Chair), Jon
Kettenring, Jerry Lawless, Jeff Robinson, Daryl Pregibon, and Jeff Wu.
This committee and Rob Easterling (Sandia National Laboratories), who
was selected as Program Chair of the first conference, and Jerry Sacks (NISS),
who handled local arrangements, all contributed to a successful launch
of the conference. SPES and IMS officers during the period of
negotiations, in particular Steve Vardeman, Ann Shoemaker and Dick
Beckman (past SPES Chairs) and Rob Kass, Jon Wellner, and Iain Johnstone
(past IMS Program Chairs), were also very supportive.
The First SRC: Chapel Hill, North Carolina, June 13-15, 1994
The first SRC took place at the Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill, North
Carolina. The Program Chair was Rob Easterling, and the local sponsor
was the National Institute for Statistical Sciences (NISS).The keynote
speaker was George Box, who spoke on "Scientific Leadership for
Statistics." The plenary speakers were Jerome Friedman of Stanford
University on "Computational Learning, Neural Networks, and Statistical
Prediction," and Larry Sumney of the Semiconductor Research Corporation
discussing industry-academia collaborations.
The Second SRC: Waterloo, Ontario, June 12-14 1995
In 1995 the conference moved north to the campus of the University of
Waterloo, and was hosted by the Department of Statistics and Actuarial
Science. The Program Chair was Jeff Wu, and the local chairs were Bovas
Abraham and Mike Hamada. The keynote speaker was Stuart Geman of Brown
University, who spoke on "Restoration of Movies, Industrial Strength
Character Recognition and Some Other High-Tech Applications of
Statistics." The plenary speakers were John Urbanic of GM Canada on "The
University-Industry Interaction: A Canadian Experience," and Jerry
Lawless of the University of Waterloo on "Statistical Problems in the
Analysis of Product Field Reliability." Several invited sessions focused
on applications of interest to the engineering community, and this
portion of the program was co-sponsored by the Production Engineering
Division of the ASME.
The Third SRC (JRC with QPRC): Gaithersburg, Maryland, May 29-31,
1996
The 13th Quality and Productivity Research Conference and the 3rd Spring
Research Conference on Statistics in Industry and Technology were held
jointly at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in
Gaithersburg, MD from May 29 through May 31, 1996. There were 210
statisticians and engineers that attended this first ever joint meeting,
including twenty five students.
The program consisted of 3 plenary sessions, 26 invited talks, and 53
contributed talks. Vijay Nair opened the conference with the plenary
talk "Statistics in Industry: Research Opportunities & Challenges",
which outlined current research issues and models of collaboration from
the author's experience. William Golomski began the second day with the
plenary session "The Needs of Industry, Engineering, & Science for
Statistics in the Emerging Millennium" which described critical
engineering needs which call for applied statistical research. The
conference closed with a plenary panel session on "Computer Models &
Data Interface: Development, Validation, & Inference" led by Rob
Easterling. This panel discussed statistical design and analysis issues
involved when data are available from both computer models and physical
tests.
Additional local sponsors for the conference included the E.I. du Pont
de Nemours & Company, and the National Institute of Standards &
Technology. Participants felt that this joint format for the two
conferences should be repeated every several years. (In fact, the next
joint conference will be held in 2000, in Seattle).
The Fourth SRC: New Brunswick, New Jersey, June 2-4, 1997
In 1997 the conference was joint with the New Jersey Spring Symposium
and was held at the Hyatt Regency in New Brunswick. The host was the New
Jersey Chapter of the ASA, and the Program Chair was Scott Vander Wiel
of Bell Labs.
The plenary speakers were Jon Kettenring of Bellcore on "Massive Data
Sets, Data Mining, and Cluster Analysis," Randy Greasham of Merck on
"Experimental Design: A Key Component of Drug Development," Max Morris
of Oak Ridge National Laboratory on "Trends and Needs in Scientific and
Industrtial Statistics," John MacGregor of McMaster University on
"Multivariate Methods in Process Optimization and Design," and Jeff Wu
of the University of Michigan on "Industrial Experimental Design Since
Box, Hunter, and Hunter."
The Fifth SRC: Santa Fe, New Mexico, June 3-5, 1998
The 1998 conference was held at St. John's College in Santa Fe, an
idyllic setting among the foothills of the Sange de Cristo mountains.
Hosted by the Albuquerque Chapter of the ASA, the conference chairs were
Bovas Abraham (Invited Program), Stephen Crowder (Contributed Program),
and Joanne Wendelberger (Local Arrangements). Local program sponsors
included Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National laboratory, and
Intel. The conference attracted 120 participants.
The keynote address was given by George Box on "Feedback Adjustment for
Statistical Process Control." Plenary speakers included John Casti of
the Sante Fe Institute on "The Geometry of Data", Bill Meeker of Iowa
State on "Statistical Methods for Probabilistic Design", Gene Meieran of
Intel on "Betwixt and Between Industry and Academia", and Jerry Lawless
of the University of Waterloo on "Analysis of Variation Transmission in
Manufacturing Processes."
A Thursday afternoon workshop on Data Mining was presented by John
Elder. A post conference tour to Bandelier National Monument was also
offered.
The Sixth SRC: Twin Cities, Minnesota, June 2-4, 1999
The Seventh SRC (JRC with QPRC): Seattle, Washington, June 26-28, 2000
The Eighth SRC: Roanoke, Virginia, June 18-20, 2001
The Nineth SRC: Ann Arbor, Michigan, May 20-22, 2002
The Tenth SRC: Dayton, Ohio, June 4-6, 2003
The Eleventh SRC: Geithersburg, Maryland, May 19-21, 2004
The Twelveth SRC: Park City, Utah, June 1-3, 2005
The Thirteenth SRC (JRC with QPRC): Knoxville, Tennessee, June 7-9, 2006
?The Fouteenth SRC: Ames, Iowa, 2007
?The Fifteenth SRC: Atlanta, Georgia, 2008
?The Sixteenth SRC: Banff, Alberta, Canada, 2009
?Another JRC?, 2010
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Conference
sponsors
College of Business Administration
College of Engineering
Quality and Productivity Research Conference
Section on Quality and Productivity
Section on Physical and Engineering Sciences
Spring Research Conference on Statistics in Industry and Technology
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