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.
                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                              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.

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