The Cleveland Chapter and department of statistics at the University of Akron will host a workshop and symposium in celebration of the International Year of Statistics.

The full-day workshop, “Introduction to Statistical Computing with R and Bioconductor,” will be presented by Martin Morgan of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center October 4 at the University of Akron. R offers a computing platform that is easy to use and lends itself to a variety of statistical methodologies in all fields of application. For cutting-edge biomedical applications, a collection of packages called Bioconductor was introduced more than a decade ago and is now the toolbox of choice for people working in areas such as genomics, population genetics, proteomics, next-generation sequencing, and epigenetics. This workshop is a unique opportunity to learn the basics of both R and Bioconductor from members of the Bioconductor Core Development Group at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The maximum number of participants for this workshop is 35 (first come, first served).

The following day, a symposium titled “Statistics at the Crossroads: Its Multifaceted Impact on Society” will be held at the same location. Statistics is ubiquitous in today’s world and is leaving its effect on every aspect of human society. The one-day symposium seeks to provide a compact overview of its all-pervasive and multifaceted impact. Recently elected 2015 ASA President David Morganstein will deliver the keynote address. The five invited sessions focus on the following:

• Bioinformatics (high-dimensional and high-throughput data)
• Survival analysis and epidemiology
• Clinical trials and observational studies
• Statistics in industry and finance
• Statistics education

The list of invited speakers will be updated on the chapter website.

Call for Abstracts

There will be contributed posters and contributed oral presentations in all of the above-mentioned areas, abstracts for which can be submitted to the contact persons listed on the symposium website. A limited number of slots is available, and the abstract submission deadline is August 25.

Registration

The advance registration (required for the workshop) deadline is September 24. For complete information about the workshop and symposium, visit the website.