ISBA@NIPS

ISBA supports initiatives that highlight the importance and impact of Bayesian methods in machine learning and data science. For the past several years ISBA has promoted proposals for workshops submitted to the Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) Conference. ISBA will continue this tradition for the 2018 meeting held Dec 3-8 in Montréal, Canada (https://nips.cc/Conferences/2018).

The ISBA Program Council encourages individuals planning to submit proposals for post-conference workshops related to Bayesian methods at NIPS 2018 to request ISBA endorsement. Last year, three ISBA-endorsed workshops were chosen for the final program. Organizers of workshops related to Bayesian methods at NIPS 2018 can apply for ISBA endorsement by emailing the following information to program-council@bayesian.org:

1. Workshop Name
2. Names/affiliations of organizing committee members
3. Abstract describing the purpose of the workshop and its relationship to Bayesian methods
4. Names/affiliations of confirmed speakers
5. Tentative program schedule

The ISBA Program Council will promptly review all requests submitted by May 31, 2018 and will reply with a decision by June 6, 2018 so that workshop organizers can include the ISBA endorsement in their proposal to NIPS (deadline June 11). Endorsed workshops will not involve a financial contribution from ISBA (but see info on travel awards below) and ISBA cannot be exposed to any loss or profits

ISBA@NIPS Travel Award

As part of the ISBA@NIPS initiative, ISBA expects to grant three ISBA@NIPS travel awards ($500 each) across all accepted workshops at NIPS endorsed by ISBA. Each awardee will receive $500 to reimburse travel expenses to NIPS. The organizers of ISBA-endorsed workshops at NIPS will send a call for travel award applications in September 2018, from which they will propose candidates for the competition.

Eligibility criteria:

– Only participants in ISBA-endorsed workshops at NIPS will be considered.

– The recipients should be graduate students or junior researchers (up to five years after graduation) who will be presenting at the workshop.

– The recipients should be ISBA members at the time of receiving the award.

Application procedure:

– The organizers of ISBA-endorsed workshops at NIPS who wish to apply will select at most two individuals and propose them as candidates to the ISBA Program Council. The deadline for nominations is Sep 30, 2018.

– The ISBA Program Council will select the recipient(s) from among the candidates proposed by all ISBA-endorsed workshops and communicate the results to the workshop organizers. The winner(s) will be recognized as ISBA@NIPS Travel Award recipients at the NIPS workshops. For further information, email program-council@bayesian.org