The Committee on Probability and Statistics in the Physical Sciences, C(PS)² in short, has been re-assembled in August 2011, under the auspices of the Bernoulli Society for Mathematical Statistics and Probability.

2023-2025 membership of C(PS)²: 

Jingwen Song (Chairwoman [2023-], Northwestern Polytechnical University, China)

Matthias G.R. Faes (TU Dortmund University, Germany)

Masaru Kitahara (The University of Tokyo, Japan)

Yuan Huang (Yale University, USA)

Manyu Xiao (Northwestern Polytechnical University, China)

Edoardo Patelli (University of Strathclyde, UK)

Cao Wang (University of Wollongong, Australia)

Zhiqiang Wan (Northwestern Polytechnical University, China)

2021-2023 membership of C(PS)²:

Marcos Valdebenito (Chairman [2021-2022], Adolfo Ibáñez University, Chile)

André Beck (University of Sao Paulo, Brazil)

Eleni Chatzi (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)

Jianbing Chen (Tongji University, China)

Wei Gao (University of New South Wales, Australia)

Martin Hazelton (University of Otago, New Zealand)

Yuan Huang (Yale University, USA)

Ioannis Kougioumtzoglou (Columbia University, USA)

Edoardo Patelli (University of Strathclyde, UK)

Alba Sofi (Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria, Italy)

Seymour Spence (University of Michigan, USA)

Cao Wang (University of Wollongong, Australia)

Pengfei Wei (Northwestern Polytechnical University, China)

2018-2020 membership of C(PS)²:

Michael Beer (Chairman, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany)

Ron Bates (Rolls-Royce plc , UK)

Richard Chandler (University College London, UK)

Jianbing Chen (Tongji University, China)

Wei Gao (University of New South Wales, Australia)

Martin Hazelton (University of Otago, New Zealand)

Francisco Alejandro Diaz De la O (University of Liverpool, UK)

Ioannis Kougioumtzoglou (Columbia University, USA)

Kuldeep Meel (National University of Singapore, Singapore)

Alba Sofi (Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria, Italy)

Marcos Valdebenito (Santa María University, Valparaíso, Chile)

Shaomin Wu (University of Kent, UK)

Konstantin Zuev (Caltech, USA)

2015-2018 membership of C(PS)²:

Konstantin Zuev (Chairman, Caltech, USA)

Michael Beer (Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany)

Julie Carreau (IRD, Montpellier, France)

Francisco Alejandro Diaz De la O (University of Liverpool, UK)

Maksim Kitsak (Northeastern University, Boston, USA)

Aleksey Polunchenko (Binghamton University, USA)

Marcos Valdebenito (Santa María University, Valparaíso, Chile)

Ilia Zaliapin (University of Nevada, Reno, USA)

Fengliang Zhang (Tongji University, Shanghai, China)

2013-2015 membership of C(PS)²:

Ilia Zaliapin (Chairman, Reno, Nevada, USA)

Julie Carreau (Montpellier, France)

Jan Picek (Liberec, Czech Republic)

Bala Rajaratnam (Stanford, California, USA)

Jorge Mario Ramirez Osorio (Medellin, Colombia)

Konstantin Zuev (Liverpool, UK)

2011-2013 membership of C(PS)²:

Harry Pavlopoulos (Chairman, Athens, Greece)

Carlo DeMichele (Milano, Italy)

Jorge Mario Ramirez Osorio (Medellin, Colombia)

Jan Picek (Liberec, Czech Republic)

Enrique Thomann (Corvallis, Oregon, USA)

Ilia Zaliapin (Reno, Nevada, USA)

The C(PS)² committee will focus on promoting statistical and probabilistic methods across the physical and engineering sciences in an interdisciplinary manner and demonstrating essential benefits over a large range of applications. This aspiration is building on the previous work of the C(PS)² committee addressing current needs of our society. Systems and networks, which are key to the functionality of our developed world, are characterized by a rapid growth in scale and complexity, associated with a growing risk due to unexpected failures. This introduces a series of issues that challenge our approaches for ensuring the performance and reliability of our systems and networks. Essentially, statistical and probabilistic methods need to be developed further and utilized comprehensively for extracting, quantifying, processing and evaluating information dealing with the entire range from sparse to big data. The C(PS)² committee will facilitate interdisciplinary communication across the communities in order to establish and expand mutual understanding about the capabilities and benefits of statistical and probabilistic methods for solving those challenges. Specifically, workshops, conferences, mini-symposia and special sessions will be organized in a targeted manner to connect communities and to generate synergies. Particular target are major international conferences, which support both deep fundamental developments and practical applications. In this manner we will facilitate a closer collaboration not only between the research communities, but also between fundamental and applied sciences with tighter connections to the engineering sciences. We envisage, in this manner, an accelerated migration of statistical and probabilistic methods into engineering technologies and applications, feeding back on the fundamental importance of statistics and probability theory.

In particular, in the next two years, the committee plans to expand its efforts from the areas where the committee members are traditionally active, such as geosciences, statistical seismology, and hydrology, to two other broad areas: complex network data modeling and applications of probability and statistics to engineering sciences. Recent years have witnessed an explosion of network data in science, engineering, and businesses. Large datasets of social, biological, technological, and information networks are analyzed by thousands of scientists around the world, making probabilistic modeling and statistical analysis of network data a mainstream research area in statistics, computer science, social sciences, system biology, and physics. It is thus crucial to provide an arena for experts where they can present and discuss the latest developments in the field. Another important trend that became apparent in recent years is the ever increasing importance of advanced probabilistic and statistical methods in engineering fields. To encourage collaboration between the research communities, C(PS)² plans to support and contribute through its activities to the efforts of the Engineering Mechanics Institute, which provides an important platform for interdisciplinary communication of statistical and probabilistic methods and their applications in the realm of engineering sciences.

C(PS)² is the current name (revised since the early 1990’s) of the Committee for Statistics in the Physical Sciences (CSPS), initially formed by the Bernoulli Society Council at the Warsaw ISI-session in August 1975, shortly after the Bernoulli Society was officially created on June 10, 1975 at Voorburg, Netherlands.

The then ASA Director, F.C. Leone, was appointed as chairman of CSPS. He was asked to set up the committee with a mission to take up the special responsibility for statistics in the physical sciences. Up to that time, that special responsibility was served by the International Association for Statistics in the Physical Sciences (IASPS), which was linked to the International Statistical Institute (ISI).

As a matter of fact, IASPS is considered as the main predecessor of the Bernoulli Society, because the official creation of the Bernoulli Society resulted from the legal adoption by IASPS of the European Regional Committee of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (ERC/IMS) and of the then independent Committee for Conferences on Stochastic Processes (CCSP).

A much more detailed note on the prehistory that led to the creation of the Bernoulli Society and CSPS, from the merging of IASPS with ERC/IMS and CCSP, is given by Jef L. Teugels at this link.

The chronological sequence of chairmen of CSPS or C(PS)² follows:

F.C. Leone (1975 – 1981)

Geoffrey Watson (1981- 1985)

Jef Teugels (1985-1989)

Nick Fisher (1989-1993)

Richard Smith (1993-1995)

Ed Waymire (1995-2000)

David Brillinger (2000-2004)

Wojbor Woyczynski (2004-2008)

Peter Guttorp (2008-2011)

Harry Pavlopoulos (2011-2013)

Ilia Zaliapin (2013-2015)

Konstantin Zuev (2015-2018)

Michael Beer (2018-2020)

Marcos Valdebenito (2021-2023)