Classification Society News

Congratulations to Irene Vrbik, the winner of the 2014 Classification Society Distinguished Dissertation Award for her dissertation titled Non-Elliptical and Fractionally-Supervised Classification (University of Guelph). Hsin-Hsiung Huang received honorable mention this year for his dissertation Information extraction for Virus Classification and Robust Dimension Reduction (University of Illinois at Chicago).

The Classification Society each year offers an award for an outstanding PhD dissertation on the theme of clustering, classification, related areas of data analysis, encompassing both associated theory and/or applications. The 2014 Award was US $500 in book vouchers from Chapman and Hall/CRC and an invited presentation at the CS Annual Meeting. Watch this page for announcements of the next call for nominations.

The 2015 conference of the International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS) will be held at the University of Bologna, Italy, from July 6th to July 8th, 2015.

The conference will include a president’s invited session and a presidential address, key note presentations, invited presentations, invited and contributed symposia, and oral and poster presentations. Details on the meeting can be found at https://ifcs.boku.ac.at/_conference//ifcs2015/ifcs2015.

2015 CALL FOR NOMINATIONS

The Rohlf Medal

The Rohlf Medal was established in 2006 by the family and friends of F. James Rohlf to mark his 70th birthday. He has been a longtime Stony Brook University faculty member and is currently Emeritus Distinguished Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution, and Research Professor in the Department of Anthropology.

Recipients of the Rohlf Medal will be recognized for excellence in their body of work on the development of new morphometric methods or for their applications in the biomedical sciences, including evolutionary biology, population biology, physical anthropology, and medicine. The term ‘morphometrics’ is intended to include high-dimensional pattern analyses of biological shape, especially those that analyze shape in a comprehensive way, or of covariation of shape with other variables. The award can recognize advances in the mathematical or statistical theory underlying morphometric methods, new software that implements or visualizes new methods, or specific new biological findings that rely crucially on contemporary morphometric methods and represent major advances.

Candidates for the Rohlf Medal may be self-nominated or nominated by others. They must possess a Ph.D. degree or the equivalent.

The winning candidate must agree to attend the award ceremony in person in order to accept the Rohlf Medal and then deliver the award lecture.

Nomination packages should include,

1. a description of the body of work (not to exceed two pages) on which the candidacy is based,
2. reprints of no more than three relevant papers and/or software products,
3. a curriculum vitae, and
4. the names and addresses of three referees.

Nominating packages should be uploaded to the Rohlf Medal website (http://life.bio.sunysb.edu/ee/rohlf_medal/apply.html) and received by 5 pm, EST, 15 July 2015 to be assured of full consideration.

The successful candidate will receive the Rohlf Medal and a cash prize at Stony Brook University, planned for October 26th, 2015. She or he will deliver a lecture that is appropriate for a broad audience, ranging from the exact sciences to the humanities, concerning the morphometric methodology, software, or findings for which the Rohlf Medal was awarded.