Edited by Songthip Ounpraseuth, Biometrics Section Publications Officer
During JSM 2011, the Biometrics Section presented its David P. Byar Young Investigator Award to Daniela Witten of the University of Washington for her paper “Penalized Classification Using Fisher’s Linear Discriminant.” She received $1,500.
In addition to the Byar award, the section also chose the following authors for travel awards:
- Genevera Allen of Rice University for “A Generalized Least Squares Matrix Decomposition”
- Qunhua Li of the University of California at Berkeley for “Measuring Reproducibility of High-Throughput Experiments”
- Jessica Minnier of Harvard University for “Risk Classification with an Adaptive Naïve Bayes Kernel Machine Model”
- Layla Parast of Harvard University for “Landmark Prediction of Long-Term Survival Incorporating Short-Term Event Time Information”
- Sihai Dave Zhao of Harvard University for “Grouped Variable Selection via Hierarchical Models”
The Byar award is given annually to a new researcher in the Biometrics Section who presents an original manuscript at the Joint Statistical Meetings. The award commemorates David Byar, a renowned biostatistician who made significant contributions to the development and application of statistical methods during his career at the National Cancer Institute.
Invited session ideas for JSM 2012—to be held July 28 to August 2 in San Diego, California—are wanted. A typical invited session consists of three 30-minute talks followed by a 10-minute invited discussion and 10 minutes of floor discussion. If you are interested in organizing an invited session or have an idea for one, contact the section’s program chair, Timothy D. Johnson, at tdjtdj@umich.edu.
Also, ideas for short courses may be submitted to the section’s continuing education chair, Annie Qu, at anniequ@illinois.edu.
Finally, Biometrics Section members are invited to attend the two-day short course on the prevention and treatment of missing data in clinical trials, hosted in Iselin, New Jersey, at the Renaissance Woodbridge Hotel November 1–2. The registration fee is $550 per participant and includes breakfast and lunch daily, as well as a paperback copy of the National Research Council Report.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently commissioned the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences to prepare “a report with recommendations that would be useful for FDA’s development of a guidance for clinical trials on appropriate study designs and follow-up methods to reduce missing data and appropriate statistical methods to address missing data for analysis of results.” After creating the Panel on Handling of Missing Data in Clinical Trials, the National Research Council issued the report The Prevention and Treatment of Missing Data in Clinical Trials in December of 2010.
This two-day short course—developed by panel members Rod Little, Dan Scharfstein, Joe Hogan, Jim Neaton, and Jay Siegel—will provide in-depth coverage of the content of the report. The presentations will be infused by newly developed and rigorous case studies, which will demonstrate the latest thinking about the design and analysis of randomized studies threatened by biases caused by missing data. Tom Permutt and Bob O’Neil from the FDA will round out the list of presenters to provide a regulatory perspective.
The course is targeted toward data analysts, statisticians, and other quantitative scientists involved in the design, analysis, and reporting of results of clinical trials of devices or treatments subject to regulatory review.
Register, or for administrative questions about the course, contact Ashley Gilliam at agilliam@jhsph.edu. For specific questions about the course, contact Daniel Scharfstein at dscharf@jhsph.edu.
Leave a Reply