Biometrics Section News for March

Edited by Sheng Luo, Biometrics Section Publications Officer

Daniels Durante of the University of Padova was awarded the David P. Byar Young Investigator Award for his paper, “Bayesian Inference on Group Differences in Brain Networks.”

The David P. Byar Young Investigator 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.

Through a comprehensive review process of 40 submissions, the award committee also chose the following nine travel award winners in addition to Durante:

• Lee McDaniel of the University of Wisconsin-Madison for “Generalized Linear Models for Longitudinal Data with Biased Sampling Designs: A Sequential Offsetted Regressions Approach”
• SungHwan Kim of the University of Pittsburgh for “Integrative Multi-Omics Clustering for Disease Subtype Discovery by Sparse Overlapping Group Lasso and Tight Clustering”
• Yanxun Xu of Rice University for “Bayesian Nonparametric Estimation for Dynamic Treatment Regimes with Sequential Transition Times”
• Chuan Hong of The University of Texas for “PLEMT: A Novel Pseudolikelihood-Based EM Test for Homogeneity in Generalized Exponential Tilt Mixture Models”
• Jason Xu of the University of Washington for “Tensor Generalized Estimating Equations for Longitudinal Imaging Analysis”
• Xiang Zhang of North Carolina State University for “Optimum Study Design for Detecting Imprinting and Maternal Effects Based on Partial Likelihood”
• Fangyuan Zhang of The Ohio State University for “Optimum Study Design for Detecting Imprinting and Maternal Effects Based on Partial Likelihood”
• Xi Lu of the University of Michigan for “Comparing Treatment Policies with Assistance from the Structural Nested Mean Model”
• Ran Tao of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for “Analysis of Sequence Data Under Multivariate Trait-Dependent Sampling”

Durante will receive a $2,000 award, and the travel award winners will each receive a $1,000 award to present their papers in two Biometrics Session–sponsored topic-contributed sessions at JSM.

JSM 2015 Program

The Biometrics Section will sponsor the following two Continuing Education (CE) courses and six invited sessions at the 2015 Joint Statistical Meetings in Seattle, Washington.

CE Courses

• Dynamic Treatment Regimes, Sequentially Randomized Trials, and Causal Inference (half-day), taught by Bibhas Chakraborty of Duke-National University of Singapore and Erica Moodie of McGill University
• Analysis of Categorical Data (full-day), taught by Christopher Bilder of the University of Nebraska

Invited Sessions

• Making Better Decisions: Recent Statistical Advances and Challenges in Aging and Dementia Research, organized by Dandan Liu of Vanderbilt University and Chengjie Xiong of Washington University at St. Louis
• Statistical Advances for the Detection of Gene-Environment Interactions, organized by Yuehua Cui of Michigan State University
• Challenges in the Identification and Validation of Surrogate Markers, organized by Layla Parast of RAND Corporation
• Recent Advances in Statistical Methods for Complex Longitudinal Data, organized by Yanqing Sun of The University of North Carolina at Charlotte
• Differential and/or Biased Missingness: Myths, Methods, and Manifestations, organized by William L. Mietlowski of Novartis Oncology
• Shedding Light in the Biology of Complex Diseases Using Cutting-Edge Statistical Methods for Family Data, organized by Roula Tsonaka of Leiden University Medical Center

If you have been thinking about becoming more involved with JSM, consider volunteering to chair a session. Chairing a session is an important responsibility and a great way to meet your colleagues. Contact the section’s program chair, Rebecca Hubbard, at rhubb@upenn.edu.