Dear Colleagues,

The eighth World Congress in Probability and Statistics will be in Istanbul from July 9 to 14, 2012. It is jointly organized by the Bernoulli Society and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics. Scheduled every four years, this meeting is a major worldwide event for statistics and probability, covering all its branches, including theoretical, methodological, applied and computational statistics and probability, and stochastic processes. It features the latest scientific developments in these fields.

The program will cover a wide range of topics in statistics and probability, presenting recent developments and the state of the art in a variety of modern research topics, with in-depth sessions on applications of these disciplines to other sciences, industrial innovation and society. It will feature several special plenary lectures presented by leading specialists. In addition, there will be many invited sessions highlighting topics of current research interests, as well as a large number of contributed sessions and posters.

The venue of the meeting is Grand Cevahir Hotel & Convention Center located in Istanbul which is a vibrant, multi-cultural and cosmopolitan city bridging Europe and Asia. Istanbul has a unique cultural conglomeration of east and west, offering many cultural and touristic attractions, such as Hagia Sophia, Sultanahmet, Topkapi Palace and Maiden's Tower.

On behalf of the Program Committee and the Local Organizing Committee, we invite you to join us in Istanbul for this exciting scientific event. Your participation will ensure that the 2012 World Congress will be a memorable meeting.


Elvan Ceyhan and Mine Caglar, Co-chairs of the Local Organizing Committee

Arnoldo Frigessi, Chair of the Program Committee