Two University of Queensland academics have been appointed to head prestigious international organisations.
The Director of UQ's Office of Undergraduate Education, Professor Sushila Chang, has been appointed Chairman of the Board of the International Life Sciences Institution (ILSI).
This is the first time ILSI has had a chair outside of North America.
ILSI is a non profit, worldwide organization whose mission is to improve public health and well-being by engaging academic, government and industry scientists in a neutral forum to advance scientific understanding in the areas related to nutrition, food safety, risk assessment, and the environment.
ILSI receives its funding from industry, governments, and foundations. It was set up in
1978 and besides 14 international geographic branches( North America, Europe, Argentina, Brazil, India. Korea, China, Mexico, North Africa and Gulf Region, North Andean, South Africa, South Andean, Southeast Asia Region including Australia and New Zealand) and a global branch, the Health and Environmental Sciences Institute, it also houses the ILSI Research Foundation.
ILSI’s website is at http://www.ilsi.org
Deputy Director of UQ's Academic Board and Head, School of Land, Crop and Food Sciences
Professor Kaye Basford, has just commenced her two-year term as President of the International Biometric Society (IBS).
She intends to promote the IBS as a supportive environment in which interaction, collaboration and learning opportunities are facilitated and enhanced so that members (particularly young people and those from special circumstance countries) can broaden their collegiate network for personal and professional development.
Kaye will draw on the knowledge and experience gained during her recent term as President of the Statistical Society of Australia.
“Biometry” is the active pursuit of biological knowledge by quantitative methods (R.A. Fisher, 1947).
The International Biometric Society, founded in 1947 promotes the development and application of statistical and mathematical theory and methods in the biosciences (which includes agriculture, biomedical science and public health, ecology, environmental sciences, forestry, and allied disciplines).
The Society has over 5,300 members (from 80 countries) in 34 regions and groups, and publishes two professional journals, Biometrics and the Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics.
It holds international conferences every two years, with recent venues being Berkeley, USA (2000), Freiburg, Germany (2002), Cairns, Australia (2004), Montréal, Canada (2006), Dublin, Ireland (2008), and Florianópolis, Brazil (scheduled for December 2010). Regions and groups also run regular meetings.
