Conference: The 2026 World Meeting of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis

This award provides support for U.S.-based junior researchers to attend the 2026 World Meeting of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA), which will be held in Nagoya, Japan, from 28 June to 3 July 2026. ISBA World Meetings are the largest conferences in Bayesian statistics, whose key benefit, beyond showcasing the latest research advances and highlighting emerging directions, is the exposure of participants (especially junior researchers) to ideas and colleagues with whom they may not ordinarily interact. The 2026 World Meeting will bring together the world's leading Bayesian researchers and promising junior researchers, build ties between them, and foster new collaborative and mentoring relationships. By supporting travel awards that partially offset the cost of traveling to Nagoya from the U.S., this grant will improve junior researchers' chances of career success, lead to new collaborations, ensure the continued high quality of Bayesian research, and strengthen the U.S.’s leading position in Bayesian statistics. The Bayesian statistical paradigm is particularly well-suited to the task of deriving actionable insight from the vast amount of noisy, complex, and highly structure data collected in the modern world: it provides a coherent framework for (i) integrating information from different sources; (ii) communicating findings and conclusions using probabilities; (iii) easily incorporating relevant prior knowledge; and (iv) propagating all uncertainties into the final inference. But the increased complexity and scale of modern data and applications push the limits of existing methods, computational implementations, and theory, necessitating continued research in Bayesian statistics. The 2026 ISBA World Meeting will feature plenary talks, invited talks, contributed talks, poster sessions, and a short course selected to showcase cutting-edge research in Bayesian statistics. Attendance at the meeting will offer all attendees --- and especially junior researchers --- opportunities to learn about emerging challenges in Bayesian statistics, share their ongoing research with a truly international audience, and foster new collaborative relationships. The meeting website is: https://isba2026.github.io This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. NSF Award ID: 2602313 | Program: 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: Sameer Deshpande | Institution: University of Wisconsin-Madison, MADISON, WI | Award Amount: $20,000 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2602313 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2602313.html