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Nominations are sought for the position of statistician on the oversight committee of the IntCal working group (IWG). The aim of our group is to provide an accurate, internationally agreed radiocarbon calibration curve for use throughout the radiocarbon dating community. By the appointment of such a statistician and two palaeoscientists to the IWG we hope to allow wider community input and transparency to the process. The statistician on the oversight committee will work alongside other committee members to provided the benefits of their experience on all aspects of the project; in particular on acceptance of suitable datasets and on the specifics of the cutting-edge challenges of modelling these types of data including the complex covariance structures required (those not familiar with the modelling work thus far on this project can read about it in a recent paper in the journal Bayesian Analysis, http://ba.stat.cmu.edu/vol03is02.php). The work on the calibration curve is currently being undertaken with the aid of a grant from the UK's Natural Environment Research Council to Dr. Paula Reimer and Prof. Gerry McCormac (Queen's University Belfast) and Prof. Caitlin Buck and Prof. Paul Blackwell (University of Sheffield). Informal enquiries about the role of oversight committee members may be made to any member of the team. The key duties of the statistician elected would be attendance at a (1.5 day) meeting of the oversight committee members and the Belfast and Sheffield group at the University of Sheffield in summer 2009 and either a full IWG meeting in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA (date to be announced, dependent on funding) or a second smaller meeting in Belfast in 2010. The oversight committee members will be asked to contribute to a report of the meetings that will be made public. Expenses to the meetings will be met in full with support from PAGES and funding from our NERC grant. Oversight committee members will be included as co-authors on the key calibration curve papers resulting from this work. The previous version of this paper (Reimer P.J. et al., 2004, Radiocarbon, 46, 1029-1058) has received over 600 citations. To nominate individuals for the position of statistician please send their names and email addresses to Mark McClure, Managing Editor of Radiocarbon, at [log in to unmask] using the subject heading IntCal Oversight Committee Nomination. Please first ensure that the individuals you nominate are willing to serve if elected. Current and former members of the IWG are ineligible for these positions. Nominations will close on October 31, 2008. Mark will collate the nominations and manage the elections (those wishing to vote who are not already members of the Radiocarbon Maling List should subscribe now using the instructions at: http://www.radiocarbon.org/Info/c14-l.html). -- Prof Caitlin E. Buck Department of Probability and Statistics University of Sheffield Hicks Building Hounsfield Road Sheffield S3 7RH Tel: +44 114 222 3715 (direct line) Tel: +44 114 222 3731 (secretary) Fax: +44 114 222 3809