IN THIS ISSUE - The International Biometric Society
Transcription
IN THIS ISSUE - The International Biometric Society
BIOMETRIC Vol. 31 No. 4 • October–December BULLETIN International Biometric Society Internationale Biometrische Gesellschaft Société International de Biométrie President’s Corner The end of another year—a time to reflect on the past and to look forward to the future. What has it meant for the Society and its members? How can we make the Society more relevant to your needs and encourage others to join us? For many of us the year was dominated by the IBC in Florence in July. This is now finally wrapped-up, and you can find the meeting abstracts on the IBS website (www. biometricsociety.org) along with the video and materials from the short course on Meta Analysis and its implementation in R and two invited sessions. So, for those of you unable to travel to the meeting you will be able to get some flavour of the scientific activities. This is part of our ongoing aim to deliver added value to our members and help them keep abreast of developments no matter where they happen to be in the world. Of course, our IBS journals, Biometrics and JABES, are also part of this and also provide a view of biometry and our interests to the wider statistical community. Throughout the year our regions have been busy with local meetings, courses, etc., and these activities are regularly reported in this bulletin and on the various regional websites. The interplay between the international society and our regional structure is an important and unique feature of our Society, and we are busy developing initiatives to strengthen these links. We already have new programmes in place to support developing country members to travel to regional meetings (www.biometricsociety.org/travel-grantapplication) and to facilitate the delivery of short courses in developing country regions. Looking forward, Representative Council “Biometry, the active pursuit of biological knowledge by quantitative methods.” - R.A. Fisher, 1948 is currently considering a scheme to help fund activities at network and inter-region meetings that we hope will be announced early next year. As a ‘non-IBC’ year, 2015 is going to be a year where regional activities will be to the fore. There is an impressive array of meetings planned all over the world, and I hope to attend a number of these and meet as many of you as possible. I would urge you all to make these meetings welcoming and supportive to our younger and student members—they are the future of our Society and stand to gain a lot by interacting with senior colleagues but, equally, have a lot to contribute to our meetings. From the start of the year we will have a new Executive Board in place. The election is currently under way, and if you haven’t already voted please do so. Our new governance processes are well and truly in place and delivering a more streamlined and representative system, allowing the Society to move forward on many fronts. Do visit the website (www.biometricsociety.org) regularly to keep up-to-date. The year will also be a busy one for planning the next IBC in Victoria, Canada (10-15 July 2016)—the Calls for Invited Sessions and Short Course Proposals will be closing in the New Year, so if you have interesting ideas it is not too late to submit them. The end of the year is also that time when membership renewals come due, but at our current rates of USD 60 (USD 14 for developing country members) we must be the best value statistical society in the world! Remember, by renewing your membership you continue to be a member of this truly international society, gain the benefits of that membership, and help to support the development and application of biometry. Please also encourage your colleagues, stu1 Biometric Bulletin IN THIS ISSUE President’s Corner. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 From the Editor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Region Key . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 NEW FEATURE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Biometrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 JABES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Region News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Australasian Region. . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Austro-Swiss Region. . . . . . . . . . . 6 Belgian Region. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Brazilian Region. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 British and Irish Region. . . . . . . . . 7 Central American – Caribbean Region. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Dutch Region. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 German Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Eastern Mediterranean Region . . . 9 Eastern North American Region. . 10 Italian Region. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Japanese Region. . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Polish Region. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Western North American Region. . 14 Announcements and News . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Meetings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 dents and friends to join us and help grow our Society and the services that we supply to our members. You will have seen that the Communications Committee recently sent out a survey to all IBS members, and we are looking at the results to see how we can improve services to members, but do tell us if you have ideas for how we can be more relevant to your needs. My dictionary describes society as a “group Continued on p. 4 BIOMETRIC BULLETIN ISSN 8750-0434 Copyright © 2014 International Biometric Society Biometric Bulletin is published four times a year in March, June, September and December for US$40 per year by the: International Biometric Society 1444 I Street, NW, Suite 700 • Washington, DC 20005-6542 USA Telephone: +1 (202) 712-9049 • Fax: +1 (202) 216-9646 Email: <[email protected]> Website: http://www.biometricsociety.org The Biometric Bulletin is available to members of the Society as part of their annual dues. The views of contributions to this publication should not be ascribed to the International Biometric Society. Reproduction for commercial purposes is allowed if the source is acknowledged. Editor Dimitris Karlis, Dept. of Statistics, Athens University of Economics & Business, e-mail: <[email protected]> Regional Correspondents Liesbeth de Wreede (ANed), Sally Galbraith (AR), Richard Emsley (BIR), Hein Putter (Channel Network), Axel Benner (DR), Anil Barak (EMR), Leslie McClure (ENAR), Mamadou Diedhiou (GEth), Olayemi Oluwasoga (GNi), Zofia Hanusz (GPol), Cornelia Enachesu (GRo), Peter M. Njuho (GSAf), Wellington Mushayi (GZim), Babu L. Verma (IR), Satoshi Hattori (JR), Esa Läärä (NR), Cecilia Bruno (RArg), Sophie Vanbelle (RBe), Luzia Aparecida Trinca (RBras), Novie Younger (RCAC), Anabel Forte (REsp), Robert Faivre (RF), Stefano Salvadori (RItl), Seung-Ho Kang (Rko), Andrea Berghold (ROeS), Henry G. Mwambi (SUSAN), Megan Othus (WNAR), Jialiang Li (SING), Dan Kajungu (GUgan), Agnes Ankomah (GGha), John Mwangi (GKe), Njoku Ama (GBot), Innocent Zebaze (GCam), Cristian Meza (GCl), Katja Ickstadt (CEN), Alia Sajjad (PKSTAN), Andrew Zhou (CHINA). International Biometric Society Executive Board President: John Hinde, Ireland Past President: Clarice G.B. Demétrio, Brazil Secretary-Treasurer: James Carpenter, United Kingdom Directors: Wesley Johnson, United States; Lisa Lavange, United States; Kerri Mengersen, Australia; Peter Njuho, South Africa; Sharon-Lise Normand, United States; Vicente A. Núñez-Antón, Spain; José Pinheiro, United States; Paulo J. Ribeiro, Brazil; Michael Schemper, Austria; Alan Welsh, Australia; Andreas Ziegler, Germany; Hendrick Boshuizen, Netherlands Editors of Biometrics Jeremy M.G. Taylor, University of Michigan, 1415 Washington Heights, M4509 Sph Ii, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2007, Tel: (734) 9363287, Email: <[email protected]> Jeanine J. Houwing-Duistermaat, Department of Medical Statistics and Bioinformatics, Leiden University Medical Centre, Postzone S-05-P, P.O. Box 9600, 2300 RC Leiden, The Netherlands, Tel: 31-71-5269707, Email: <[email protected]> Yi-Hau Chen, Academia Sinica – Institute of Statistical Science, Taipei 11529, Taiwan R.O.C., Tel: 886-2-27871968, Email: <[email protected]> Marie Davidian (Executive Editor), North Carolina State University, Department of Statistics, Box 8203, Raleigh, NC 27695-8203, USA, Tel: +1-919-515-1940, Fax: +1-919-5157591, E-mail: <[email protected]> From the Editor SAVE THE DATE Dear Readers, In the dawn of the New Year 2015, we are glad to have a fresh new issue. In this issue we have another interesting article by Daria Steigman, about “Training a New Generation of Samurai: Why There’s a Big Data Skills Gap, and How to Solve It.” The article relates to the hot topic of Big Data and especially gives an interesting glance on how well prepared we are about this. We hope that you are going to enjoy this article just as you have the previous ones. In this issue you can find significant information from events that took place during the last period but also useful information about the forthcoming regional events throughout the world. In 2015 there are plenty of very interesting regional conferences. During the last period the Committee on Communications of the IBS ran a survey on communication matters, including topics related to the IBS website and the Biometric Bulletin. We would like to thank all the participants of the survey. In addition data from Google Analytics were collected about the website usage. Very useful information about the Bulletin and the perceptions of readers about the material were collected. A report using the collected information is planned as well as an article in a forthcoming issue of the Bulletin. Once more your suggestions about the Bulletin are welcome. Also, ideas for future featured articles are always welcome too, as we are always in need of fresh topics for this successful column.You can send any ideas to my email, [email protected]. Note that preparations for the 28th IBC, July 10-15 2016, in Victoria, Canada have already started. Calls for Invited Session Proposals and Short Courses have been announced. Best wishes for a Happy 2015!! Dimitris Karlis Editor of Journal of Agricultural, Biological and Environmental Statistics (JABES) Montserrat (Montse) Fuentes, North Carolina State University Department of Statistics, Box 8203, Raleigh, NC, 27695, USA, Tel:+1-919-515-1921, Fax: +1-919-515-1169, Email: <fuentes@ ncsu.edu> XXVIIIth International Biometric Conference 10 – 15 July 2016 Victoria, Canada Region Key Regions RArg - Argentinean Region AR - Australasian Region ROeS - Austro-Swiss Region RBe - Belgian Region RBras - Brazilian Region BIR - British and Irish Region RCAC - Central American-Caribbean Region EMR - Eastern Mediterranean Region ENAR - Eastern North American Region RF - French Region DR - German Region IR - Indian Region RItl - Italian Region JR - Japanese Region RKo - Korean Region ANed - The Netherlands Region NR - Nordic Baltic Region SING - Singapore REsp - Spanish Region WNAR - Western North American Region GBot - Botswana GCam - Cameroon GCI - Chile CHINA - China GEth - Ethiopia GGha - Ghana GKe - Kenya GNi - Nigeria PKSTAN - Pakistan GPol - Poland GRo - Romania GSAf - South Africa GUgan - Uganda GZim - Zimbabwe Networks CEN - Central European Network CN - Channel Network SUSAN - Sub-Saharan Network International Business Office Executive Director: Dee Ann Walker, CAE Director of Education: Alphonsus Baggett, MEd Coordinator, Membership: Theresa Delgado Continued on p. 6 Biometric Bulletin 2 NEW FEATURE: Training a New Generation of Samurai: Why There’s a Big Data Skills Gap, and How to Solve It By Daria Steigman Just over a year ago, Voyager 1 left our solar system. That made the little spaceship the first man-made object to reach interstellar space. While that’s mindboggling on its own, here’s what makes it even more amazing: Voyager 1 has less computing power than the original IBM personal computer. That PC, released in 1981, had two 5 ¼-inch floppy disk drives and 256 kb of memory. Today, we don’t talk about kilobytes—or megabytes. We’re operating in gigabytes and terabytes and even petabytes. It’s a whole new data world. “The meaning of large has changed,” said Kate Cowles, a professor in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Iowa. “We used to think a 10,000 dataset was large. Now we can collect and store data on vast scales.” Of course, data per se aren’t terribly useful. It’s all about understanding what to do with them: building the right data set, filtering and sorting through growing quantities of data, visualizing what you’re looking at, and applying what you have to solve problems big and small. In other words, along with new data sets comes the need for new skill sets. The demand for these skills is real—and increasing. Take just one company, Google. A recent Business Insider article cites chairman Eric Schmidt’s advice to college students: “Google really needs data analytics people and folks who have studied statistics in college.” This is a skills challenge that the National Science Foundation (NSF), an independent U.S. agency tasked with promoting “the progress of science,” wants universities to tackle. NSF issued a request for proposals in late 2012 for something with the heady name of “expeditions in training, research, and education for mathematics and statistics though quantitative explorations of data.” EXTREEMS-QED, as the grant was known, had the specific goal: To support efforts to educate the next generation of mathematics and statistics undergraduate students to confront new challenges in computational and data-enabled science and engineering. EXTREEMS-QED projects must enhance the knowledge and skills of most, if not all, the institution’s mathematics and statistics majors through training that incorporates computational tools for analysis of large data sets and for modeling and simulation of complex systems. The University of Iowa is one of the schools that has risen to the challenge. Kate Cowles and her colleagues looked at EXTREEMSQED and put together a proposal. They were awarded funding in summer 2014 and will put a large data analysis certificate program into effect next year. 3 An Interdisciplinary Approach Cowles told Biometric Bulletin that UI’s new certificate program unites three disciplines: math, statistics, and computer science. In addition to taking courses in all three departments, students will also be required to take a data mining course in the Business Department. There will also be a new capstone course taught by three faculty members representing the three core disciplines. “The idea of the capstone class is for students to apply different techniques to the same data set,” explained Cowles. “While students will get some lectures, much of the semester will be devoted to doing hands-on work.” The idea will be to approach the data from different perspectives—statistics, mathematics, and computer science—so students can learn how the same problem can be tackled from different points of view. While each of the quantitative sciences has educated its students well in its own discipline, until recently no single major had really zoomed out effectively to look at the big picture. Now multiple disciplines are collaborating to fill the gap. In 2013, UI began a campus-wide effort, the Iowa Informatics Initiative, to promote interdisciplinary research and education in informatics. The initiative includes a cluster hire of faculty who will have their primary homes in individual departments but who will also be affiliated with the new informatics center. There are new faculty hires studying big data analytics from various angles in computer science, management sciences, and engineering, with several more searches underway. “Many universities are trying to foster interdisciplinary collaboration,” said Cowles, “because the problems of the world are too big to solve in a single discipline.” Applying Data to Real World Challenges This training isn’t just happening in traditional quantitative science fields; UI’s business school has also set about training future big data analysts. Nick Street, a professor of management sciences at the College of Business, told Biometric Bulletin that the college started a business analytics program in 2013 to teach the tools needed to make decisions with data. There’s now a graduate business analytics program that attracted 30 people for the first class. (They had hoped to get 10.) “The business analytics degree has been ridiculously successful with students,” said Street, who added that employers are also very excited. “There are a lot of companies that are dealing with data life stages. We have retail and insurance companies excited about working with us and happily hiring our students.” Biometric Bulletin Street’s been looking at machine learning and applying data to solve health care problems since he was in graduate school. (Right now he’s tackling the challenge of getting better data into electronic medical records to help with decision making around patient care.) Meanwhile, Cowles, a spatial statistician, is applying her big-picture thinking to understanding the impact of weather changes on vegetation intensity. Former Google senior vice president Jonathan Rosenberg told Business Insider that “data is the sword of the 21st century, those who wield it the samurai.” While he was referring to one discipline, statistics, what’s becoming increasingly clear every day is that there’s Biometrics March 2015 Issue Highlights The March issue includes diverse articles from a range of applications and methodological areas. The Biometric Methodology section features “Causal mediation analysis with multiple mediators,” by R. M. Daniel, B. L. De Stavola, S. N. Cousens, and S. Vansteelandt; “On the selection of ordinary differential equation models with application to predator-prey dynamical models,” by Xinyu Zhang, Jiguo Cao, and Raymond J. Carroll; “Instrumental variable additive hazards models,” by Jialiang Li, Jason Fine, and Alan Brookhart; and “On the relationship between the causal-inference and meta-analytic paradigms for the validation of surrogate endpoints,” by Ariel Alonso, Wim Van der Elst, Geert Molenberghs, Marc Buyse, and Tomasz Burzykowski. In Biometric Practice, articles include “On the analysis of hybrid designs that combine group- and individual-level data,” by E. Smoot and S. Haneuse; “Structured functional principal component analysis,” by Haochang Shou, Vadim Zipunnikov, Ciprian M. Crainiceanu, and Sonja Greven; “Bayesian nonparametric estimation of targeted agent effects on biomarker change to predict clinical outcome,” by Rebecca Graziani, Michele Guindan, and Peter F. Thall; and “Spatial variable selection methods for investigating acute health effects of fine particulate matter components,” by Laura F. Boehm Vock, Brian J. Reich, Montserrat Fuentes, and Francesca Dominici. a need and a role for everyone in our brave new big data world. *IBM PC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer *EXTREEMS-QED: http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ. jsp?pims_id=504765 *Business Insider article: http://www.businessinsider.com/matlabsoftware-skills-needed-for-jobs-at-google-2014-10 *Large Data Analysis Certificate Program: http://www.stat.uiowa. edu/resources/spotlight/large-data-analysis-certificate President’s Corner Continued from p. 1 of people joined for a purpose”—well, I think that sums us up well. It also mentions companionship, something else that I hope you all find in the IBS. Let’s make 2015 another successful year for the IBS and one where you feel the increasing value of your membership. Let me finish by thanking a few people who have contributed much to this purpose and companionship over recent years—these include the outgoing members of the Executive Board:, Hendriek Boshuizen (ANeD), Wes Johnson (WNAR), Lisa Lavange (ENAR), Kerrie Mengersen (AR), Peter Njuho (SA), Vicente Núñez-Antón (REsp), Michael Schemper (ROeS); retiring Biometrics Editor Jeremy Taylor (ENAR); and, of course, outgoing President Clarice Demétrio (RBras) who has done so much over her term of office to support the Society and champion activities and initiatives for developing country members. Finally, I would like to welcome Elizabeth Thompson (WNAR) as the incoming Vice-President. I look forward to working with her over the coming years. Best wishes for the holiday season and a happy IBS active New Year. John Hinde [email protected] As always, lists of papers to appear can be found at the Biometrics website. Papers to appear in future issues may also be found under the “Early View” link at the Wiley-Blackwell website, which may be accessed by IBS members by visiting http://www.biometricsociety.org/, selecting “Biometrics” from the drop-down menu at the “Publications” link at the top of the page, and accessing the “Click here” link. News from our Publisher As noted on the Biometrics website at Wiley Online Library, the Biometrics Impact Factor for 2013 increased from 1.412 to 1.521, as reported in the ISI Journal Citation Reports. The Impact Factor is based on the overall journal citation rate for published articles during the previous two years. The journal ranks 26 of 119 among Statistics and Probability journals and 36 of 83 journals in Biology. Wiley is in the process of developing apps for all of its journals, and an app for Biometrics is currently in the works. The app will be freely available to all IBS members and will provide yet another option for members to enjoy Biometrics content online (on iPhones and iPads). The app will use a template that has already been implemented for a number of Wiley journals, including Statistics in Medicine, whose app is available in the Apple App store (search for “statistics in medicine”) and provides a preview of the features that will be available with the Biometrics app. Biometric Bulletin 4 Journal of Agricultural, Biological, and Environmental Statistics (JABES) Editor Report Editor Report The Journal of Agricultural, Biological, and Environmental Statistics (JABES) will feature many exciting and interesting articles in the upcoming issue to be released in December 2014. This issue will include T. Zhang’s “Test for the First-Order Stationarity for Spatial Point Processes in Arbitrary Regions,” M. Chen’s “Generalized Isotonized Mean Estimators for Judgment Post-stratification with Multiple Rankers,” and C. Gennings’ “Characterization of Weighted Quantile Sum Regression for Highly Correlated Data in a Risk Analysis Setting.” Also feature in this issue are O. Martin’s “Modeling of Codling Moth Damage as a Function of Adult Monitoring, Crop Protection, and Orchard Characterstics,” K. Kaufeld’s “A Spatio-Temporal Model for Mountain Pine Beetle Damage,” P. Caragea’s “A Centered Bivariate Spatial Regression Model for Binary Data with an Application to Presettlement Vegetation Data in the Midwestern United States” and H. Worthington’s “Analysing Mark-Recapture-Recovery Data in the Presence of Missing Covariate Data via Multiple Imputation.” JABES is also looking forward to featuring to invited review papers by our Associate Editors including Alison Motsinger’s “A Review of Whole Genome Modeling in Genome Wide Association Studies,” and Ruth King’s “Integrated Population Models in Statistical Ecology.” Next year is already promising to be a busy year for JABES with JSM, ENAR 2015, and a special issue in Agricultural Statistics to be released in 2015. Associate Editor, Dipankar Bandyopadhyay, has been preparing a showcase session titled “Advances is space-time covariance estimation and serially-dependent extremes” to be presented at JSM 2015 in Seattle. This session will include R. G. Niyogi’s “Low-rank spatially varying cross-covariance estimation,” B. Li’s “Nonparametric space/space-time covariance estimation,” B. Reich’s 5 “Modeling serially-dependent extremes” and a discussion by Sudipto Banerjee. There will also be an invited session at ENAR 2015 for JABES organized by Associate Editor Murali Haran titled “Journal of Agricultural, Biological, and Environmental Statistics Highlights.” This will feature E. M. Schliep’s “Multilevel Latent Gaussian Process Model for Mixed Discrete and Continuous Multivariate Response Data,” D. Senturk’s “Nonlinear Varying-Coefficient Models with Application to a Photosynthesis Study,” J. Grego’s “Limited-Information Modeling of Loggerhead Turtle Population Size,” and J. Huang’s “Analysis of Variance of Integro-Differential Equations with Application to Population Dynamics of Cottong Aphids.” JABES is looking forward to these presentations and seeing the hard work these Associate Editors have put into preparing these sessions. There will also be a special issue of JABES to be released in 2015, co-edited by Dan Nettleton and Rob Tempelman. This issue will be titled “Statistical Genomics and Transcriptomics in Agriculture.” Email [email protected] for more information. For more information on upcoming issues, the editorial board, and the aims and scope of the journal please visit our website www. editorialmanager.com/jabe. We also accept submissions of books to review in the upcoming issues of JABES, to submit a book for review please contact Mikyoung Jung at [email protected]. Thank you for your continued support to JABES! Biometric Bulletin Montse Fuentes, Editor-in-Chief Region News Australasian Region (AR) Australasian Biometric Conference, 2015 Biometrics by the Harbour Hobart, Tasmania 30th November – 4th December 2015 Save the Date: On behalf of the Australasian Region of the IBS we invite you to join us for our biennial conference. Share your work with colleagues working with statistical tools on problems in the biosciences, including ecology, agriculture, biomedical science, public health, environmental science and forestry. The conference will be held at one of Hobart’s oldest hotels – Hadley’s Hotel (http://hadleyshotel.com.au), located in the heart of Hobart. Hobart itself is well known for its history, its natural beauty, its food and culture, and as a gateway to pristine wilderness. Come and enjoy a world-class conference in a stimulating environment! Details will be posted at: http://www.BiometricSociety.org.au. Brian Niven, IBS-AR New Zealand Sub-treasurer for three decades. Thanking Brian Niven Brian Niven, who has been the IBS-AR New Zealand Sub-treasurer for the last 30 years, recently retired from the University of Otago. IBS-AR thanks Brian for all his work over the decades and wishes him a happy retirement. An article on Brian’s career can be found on page 5 of http://www. BiometricSociety.org.au/newsletter s/IBS-AR-NewsletterOct-2014.pdf. Vanessa Cave Austro-Swiss Region (ROeS) After introducing the new RoES President, Leonhard Held, (Volume 31, Issue2), we want to inform you on some sectional level changes and activities. In 2014, Franz Koenig was named as new President and of the Viennese Biometric Section (WBS) of the ROeS. Franz Koenig is an Associate Professor at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria. He is the head of the working group “Adaptive Designs and Genetic Statistics” at CeMSIIS and member of the Ethics Committee of the Medical University of Vienna. Also various seminars and workshops were held by the ROeS as well as by the individual sections highlighting the great activity within our region: A 2-day workshop on “Adaptive Designs and Multiple Testing Procedures” was organized jointly by the ROeS and the DR at Novartis in Basel, Switzerland on June 5-6, 2014. About 60 participants had the pleasure to listen to distinguished speakers from academia, health authorities and pharmaceutical industry. Talks focused on adaptive designs, sample re-estimation methods and enrichment designs. Invited speakers included Peter Bauer (University of Vienna), Norbert Benda (EMA), Frank Miller (Stockholm University), Tim Friede (University Medical Center Göttingen) and many others. Russell Millar (University of Auckland), recipient of an IBS award for Outstanding Dedication and Exemplary Service. Congratulations Russell Millar Congratulations to Russell Millar (Associate Professor, University of Auckland) who recently received an award from IBS for Outstanding Dedication and Exemplary Service as Biometrics Editor, 2011-2013. He reports that there was a preponderance of submissions from the medical and genetics fields and encourages active researchers to submit works in more diverse areas. In particular, the Biometric Practice section is ideal for works of a more applied nature if, for example, they demonstrate fresh insight from novel use of recent methodology. A seminar on “Meta-Analysis of Clinical Safety Data,” organized by the BBS (Basel Biometric Section) of the ROeS on October 2, 2014 in Basel, Switzerland. More than 80 participants were held captive by talks centered on the analysis of adverse event data from more than one clinical trial. Both FDA and CIOMS are working on guidance documents in that area, which might have contributed to the high interest the topic attracted. Talks discussed the merits of Bayesian and frequentist approaches, issues with time to event analyses, things to consider during model selection and gave insights into regulatory perspectives on ‘Safety Meta-Analysis.’ Invited speakers from academia, the industry and regulatory agencies included Stephen Evans, Brenda Crowe, Michael Gaffney, Amy Xia, Tarek Hammad, Jam Slattery and Mark Levenson. The WBS has organized three half-day seminars, each with several presentations dedicated to a certain topic. The summer seminar “Re-use of health data for medical research” was organized by the Medical University of Vienna on re-use of health. At the autumn seminar the University of Natural Resources and Life Biometric Bulletin 6 Sciences presented their current statistical research ranging from extreme value statistics and geostatistical models to reproducible research for simulation studies. In the beginning of December the last WBS seminar of this year is jointly organized with the IDEAL Project (FP7 HEALTH 2013 – 602552) on clinical trial methodology with Stephen Senn, Holger Dette, Bill Rosenberger, and Ralf-Dieter Hilgers. A seminar on “Data sharing in clinical development” was held jointly by the BBS and EFPSI (European Federation of Statisticians in the Pharmaceutical Industry) on November 13, 2014 at Actelion, Basel, Switzerland. Data sharing in clinical development is a hot topic since the appearance of the EMA draft guideline in 2013. Recently, EMA released its policy on the publication of clinical data. Around 40 participants enjoyed the informative talks from invited representatives from academia and industry and got engaged into lively and insightful discussions on this topic. Research talks were organized by the regional sections of the ROeS. Research talks were held by the WBS of the ROeS, highlighting presentations by Prof. Holger Dette (Ruhr-Universität Bochum) on “Optimal design for dose finding studies with an active control,” Prof. Bernhard Klingenberg (Williams College, Massachusetts) on “Improved confidence interval for the MantelHaenszel risk differences” and Alex Dmitrienko (Quintiles) on “Multiple testing methodology in the context of subgroup analysis.” A research talk on “Moving beyond the comfort zone for conducting clinical trials” by Dr. L.J. Wei was organized by the BBS of the ROeS at Actelion, Basel, Switzerland. Dr. Wei’s research is in the area of developing statistical methods for the design and analysis of clinical trials. The audience could highly profit from the insights provided by an expert in the field of clinical trials. De Stavola from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine gave an interesting talk on Mediation analysis with multiple mediators with an application to the study of adolescent eating disorders. Sophie Vanbelle Brazilian Region (RBras) The 2015 joint RBras and SEAGRO meetings will be held from 20 – 24 July 2015 in the Department of Statistics, Faculty of Science and Technology, Unesp, Campus of Presidente Prudente, São Paulo State. The local organisers, chaired by Aparecida Souza (adps@fct. unesp.br), and scientific committee are preparing a very interesting and exciting meeting. Some speakers are already confirmed: John Hinde (IBS President), María L. Durbán Reguera (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain) and Fernando Moura (UFRJ). The program is being carefully constructed. The target is on “Statistical methods and new challenges,” with special attention to attract students and young researchers. The idea is to offer a variety of subjects in the form of short courses. Young researchers are encouraged to apply for the best doctorate thesis. It will also be an occasion to celebrate RBras‘s 60th anniversary. Further information is being updated at http://sigeve.ead.unesp.br/ paginas/din.php?p=38. We respectfully inform that José Maria Pompeu Memória (19172014), one of RBras founders, passed away on 9 November this year. Prof. Memória gave important contributions to the development of applied statistics to our country. Those that had the honor to know him will affectionately remember him. Dominik Heinzmann Belgian Region (RBe) Annual Meeting of the Belgian Statistical Society The 22th Annual Meeting of the Belgian Statistical Society, held in Louvain-La-Neuve, during 5-7 November 2014, attracted about 150 participants. The Quetelet Society (Belgian Branch of the Biometric Society) organized two sessions, meeting with great success. During the first session, one of the two winners of the Quetelet Prize from Hasselt University presented his work.The Quetelet Prize is a possibility given to Institutional members of the Quetelet Society to award one or more students for the excellence of their master (PhD) thesis in Statistics. Hans Vernooij presented the work of his master thesis on “Antibody profile related to microarray data of MAP infected dendritic cells.” The goal of his experiment was to describe the relationship between vaccine induced anti-body response and gene expression of DC derived from MAP infected calves exposed in vitro to MAP bacteria. Nele Goeyvaerts is the second Quetelet Prize winner for her work on “Statistical and mathematical models to estimate the transmission of airborne infections from current status data.” Her PhD thesis was motivated by the fact that biomedical studies often generate repeated measures of multiple outcomes on a set of subjects. She therefore developed a biologically intuitive model for the joint evolution of these outcomes while assessing inter-subject heterogeneity. During the second session, the invited speaker Bianca 7 Prof. Memória in the beginning of his career with C. R. Rao and R. A. Fisher. Luzia Trinca British and Irish Region (BIR) Mendelian Randomisation: Past Success & Future Challenges – 14 November 2014 On Friday 14th November, the IBS-BIR held a meeting on the topic of “Mendelian Randomisation (MR).” A morning workshop was organised and aimed especially for career-young researchers to provide some background knowledge to the afternoon talks. Richard Emsley (University of Manchester) and Stephen Burgess Biometric Bulletin (University of Cambridge) gave two excellent introductory talks on “Instrumental Variables and MR,” respectively, with particular emphasis given to the underlying assumptions and methods for analysis. The afternoon session commenced with Simon Thompson (University of Cambridge) giving his Presidential Address, where he considered “Some extensions to Mendelian Randomisation,” and some surprises. The behaviour of weak instrument bias and naïve weighted allele scores were some of the surprises that Simon considered. Following this, Vanessa Didelez (University of Bristol) discussed the advantages and problems of conducting “Instrumental variable analyses with covariates” and the trade-off between potential efficiency gains versus model misspecification. After the tea break, John Thompson (University of Leicester) presented some “Cautionary Notes when Conducting Mendelian Randomization.” In a very thought provoking talk John helped to remind everyone that MR analyses should be conducted with caution and that the evaluation of MR assumptions ultimately should rely on biological knowledge and subjective judgment. He proposed a checklist to help researchers gauge when published MR analyses may or may not be appropriate. Finally the day was appropriately rounded off by George Davey Smith (University of Bristol), one of the pioneers of MR, who talked about “Mendelian Randomisation: What does the Future Hold?” George presented a number of examples showing how confidence in the assumptions can be built up through the assessment of multiple variants and by interacting instruments on an appropriate exogenous variable that modifies the effect of the instrument on the intermediate phenotype. A great day was had by all those who attended, and slides from the meeting are now available on the BIR website (available to members only): http://bir.biometricsociety.org/events/nov2014mtg. Speakers at the “Mendelian Randomisation: Past Success and Future Challenges” meeting. L-R:Vanessa Didelez, Simon Thompson, George Davey Smith, John Thompson, Stephen Burgess, Richard Emsley. “Big Data” Meeting – 17 September 2014 In September, the IBS-BIR hosted a half-day meeting on the theme of Big Data. The diverse range of speakers was testament to the wide variety of problems which fall under the big data umbrella. The first talk was by Jaakko Peltonen (Aalto University and University of Tampere), whose group has developed a more intelligent alternative to Google Scholar. With over 50 million articles available online, Jaakko discussed ways researchers can more efficiently find the articles they are after. Next up was Tom Thorne (University of Edinburgh) who presented work on “Bayesian non-parametric and biological networks.” Tom discussed a number of high dimensional search methods, including graphical models, hidden Markov mod- els, hierarchical Dirichlet processes and graphical Gaussian models, applying these to data from S. cerevisiae and C. glabrata. The third talk was by Finn Lindgren (University of Bath) who has bravely attempted to analyse the vast amount of metereological data available; in total, there are over 20 million data timeseries collected over 160 years from up to 350 weather stations! Yoram Bachrach (Microsoft Research Cambridge) rounded off the day with a very entertaining talk on social media networks. While the methods were relatively simple, the results were fascinating. With data from over 58,000 Facebook volunteers available (a sample size which made most researchers in the audience very jealous!), it is possible to build up an incredibly accurate profile of a Facebook user only from which places, celebrities, songs, etc. they “Like.” Slides from the talks are now available on the BIR website (available to members only): http://bir.biometricsociety.org/events/bigdata. *Writing acknowledgement: Doug Speed and Vincent Plagnol Michael Sweeting Central American – Caribbean Region (RCAC) Members of the IBS RCAC were instrumental in the staging the 24th Colombian Statistics Symposium which was held in Bogotá, Colombia, from 24th to 26th July 2014. This symposium was organised by the Statistics Department of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and supported by the Universidad Sergio Arboleda. Adriana Pérez (IBS RCAC member), in a plenary session, gave a presentation entitled “Statistical Aspects of the Three Main Projects from the Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science on Youth and Young Adults” and led a short course entitled “Statistical methods for handling missing data in clinical studies with univariate and multivariate outcomes.” Other short courses offered as part of the symposium were in the fields of Statistical Software, Official Statistics, Sampling, Time Series and Multivariate Analysis and had course leaders from a range of regional and international institutions such as Imperial College London and University of Southampton in the UK, Stockholm University (Sweden), Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México and Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Members of the IBS Central American Region comprised 10% of the participants in the Symposium (25 of 250). In conjunction with the 7th Regional Meeting of the Central American Region of the IBS, the 25th Colombian Statistics Symposium will be held August 5-8, 2015 in Quindío, Colombia. Confirmed invited speakers and their respective research interests include: • Anthony C. Atkinson, of the London School of Economics, UK (Regression Methods, Optimum Experiments, Statistical Analysis for Clinical Trials, and Robust Analysis) • Donald Rubin, of the Harvard University, USA (Missing Data, Bayesian Statistics, and Sampling) • Mikis Stasinoupulos, from the London Metropolitan University, UK (generalized additive model location, scale and shape (GAMLSS) models) • María Durbán, from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain (Mixed Models and Nonparametric Regression). Biometric Bulletin 8 For additional information on these 2015 meetings please email [email protected], or visit http://www.simposioestadistica.unal. edu.co/. Novie Younger Dutch Region (ANed) IBS Channel Network Conference 2015, April 20-22, Nijmegen, the Netherlands We are pleased to invite you for the 5th Channel Network Conference (20-22 April 2015). This biennial conference is organized by the regions Belgium, France, Great-Britain/Ireland and the Netherlands of the IBS. This time it will take place in the beautiful and lively city of Nijmegen. The meeting discusses the newest statistical methodology for the analysis of biological and medical data. It is a three-day conference, with two courses, invited and contributed sessions. We are proud that Sylvia Richardson (Cambridge, UK) has agreed to be the keynote speaker. In addition, we will have three invited sessions on “Confounder modelling and selection,” “Integrated population modelling” and “Dynamic prediction.” Moreover, the conference will start with two courses on: Splines by Paul Eilers (Rotterdam, The Netherlands) and “Integrated Nested Laplace Approximation” (INLA) by Andrea Riebler (Trondheim, Norway). Finally, the conference will end with a satellite symposium on Inferring dynamic genetic networks. We welcome contributed talks and posters. Deadline for abstract submission is January 10, 2015, 12.00h. Deadline for early-bird registration is February 22, 2015, 12.00h. Further information can be found on the website http://www.ibschannel2015.nl/. Rosa Meijer Working Group ‘Teaching and Didactics in Biometry’ The working group ‘Teaching and Didactics in Biometry’ has published a Springer-Book ‘Zeig mir Biostatistik—Ideen und Material für einen guten Biometrie-Unterricht’ (Show me Biostatistics! Ideas and Material for a good BiometryCourse) edited by Geraldine Rauch, Rainer Muche and Reinhard Vonthein (ISBN softcover 978-3642-54335-7, e-book 978-3-64254336-4). This book contains all submissions to the 2013 Teaching Award for the ‘Best University Teaching Material in Biometry.’ The different chapters describe ready-to-use concepts and ideas for creative teaching. Supplementary material such as working sheets, software and other material is provided online and can be downloaded by the readers. The book is available under: http://www. springer.com/education+%26+language/learning+%26+instruction/ book/978-3-642-54335-7. This list of contributing authors is: Prof. Dr. Iris Burkholder, Dr. Bettina Danner (winner of the teaching award), Dr. Jens Dreyhaupt, Beate Einsiedler, Theodor Framke, Sebastian Hoffmeister, Dr. Christian Kohl, Johannes Krisam, Jochen Kruppa, Dr. Hartmut Lanzinger, Dr. Benjamin Mayer (winner of the teaching award), Marianne Meule, Prof. Dr. Rainer Muche, Aline Naumann, Dr. Geraldine Rauch, Prof. Dr. Arne Ring, Anja Sander, Prof. Dr. Ulrich Stadtmüller, Dr. Reinhard Vonthein. This book publication would not have been possible without the generous donation of the KFSE (Konferenz der Anwender in Forschung und Entwicklung). We thank Dr. Carina Ortseifen for the helpful support. (Geraldine Rauch) German Region (DR) Axel Benner Working Group ‘Further Education’ After the great success of a series of ‘Statistics in Practice’ sessions during the recent years at the annual meeting of the German Region, the corresponding organizing working group proposed to extend the format to an international platform. The organizers of the IBC 2014 in Florence received information about the concept of the session which was finally acknowledged and accepted by the program committee. On July 10th of this year, in the middle of the conference from 2 p.m. until 6 p.m., James Carpenter (London) and Rod Little (Michigan) lectured the topic ‘Practical Approaches to the Analysis of Partially Observed Data.’ From the more than 150 participants, outstanding positive feedback was received, resulting in probably the starting point for the continuation of ‘Statistics in Practice’ during upcoming international conferences. Initial discussion had already taken place with the organizers of the IBC 2016 in Canada. The slides from James Carpenter and Rod Little are available on the workgroups homepage at http://www.biometrische-gesellschaft. de/arbeitsgruppen/weiterbildung/education-for-statistics-in-practice. html. (Willi Sauerbrei , Freiburg; Christoph Muysers, Berlin) 9 Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) News from the Region EMR, in collaboration with the Italian and Spanish Regions, will keep co-organizing sessions at the regional conference. For 2015, Christos Nakas from Greece has agreed to represent EMR in the AustroSwiss and Italian conference to be held in Milan, Italy in June 2015 in a joint session (organized by Laura Antolini) on the use of ROC quantities and derived measures on: modeling aspects, categorizations of continuous variables, and model assessment as follows: 1.Malu Luz Calle - “Identification of high-order interactions using the likelihood-ratio score optimal ROC curve” 2.Irantzu Barrio - “Categorization of continuous predictors in the development of prediction models by maximization of the AUC “ 3.Christos Nakas - “Recent advances in ROC surface methodology” 4.Laura Antolini - “Measuring prediction improvment of additional markers: strenghts and limitations of the commonly used indexes.” Biometric Bulletin Dimitris Karlis from Greece will represent EMR in the Spanish conference to be held in Bilbao Spain in September 2015. Israeli Biostatistics Forum: The 2nd Meeting of the Revived Israeli Biostatistics Forum, a branch of the EMR-IBS, was held on the 16th of November 2014 at the Souraski Center, Sheba Medical Center, Israel. The meeting was organized by Havi Murad (Gertner Institute, ISRAEL), President of EMR-IBS, in collaboration with the Israeli Statistical Association. The program on Genetics and Bioinformatics was organized by David Zucker (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, ISRAEL). The weather was quite stormy, and roads were closed. There were 66 participants. The five speakers were: Malka Gorfine (Tel-Aviv University) Heritability Estimation using Regularized Regression Approach (HERRA) 3rd talk: A replicable discovery is significant in at least two different systems. Not replicable: 1. Effect is real in the population, but one experiment missed it. 2. Effect is real in one population and not real in the other. Problems: How to handle differences in studies (sample size, noise, technology). What is the meaning of replicability when we have more than 2 samples? 5th talk: How do we automatically control for ‘discoveries’ in multiple experiments? Saharon presented a sequential approach that: • Allows different investigators to share samples • Guarantees overall control of FDR Problem: How to address the fact that typically different studies are not from exactly the same system. Conferences in the Region The 8th EMR Conference will be held in Cappadocia, Nevsehir, Turkey between May 11-15, 2015. The early bird registration date is February 31, 2015. More details can be found at http://biostat.cu.edu. tr/emr2015. Benny Yakir (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Poisson Process and the FDR Ruth Heller (Tel-Aviv University) Replicability analysis for “omics” research 16th International Symposium on Econometrics, Operations Research and Statistics will be held in Edirne, Turkey in 7-10 May 2015. The web page of the conference is http://eyi2015-en.trakya.edu.tr/. Eran Halperin (Tel-Aviv University) Ancestry Inference from Population Data Saharon Rosset (Tel-Aviv University) Quality Preserving Databases: Statistically Sound and Efficient Use of Public Databases for an Infinite Sequence of Tests. Or Zuk (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) discussed the five talks. The audience participated in the discussion. Important points raised in the discussion were: 1st talk: How do we estimate heritability of phenotype? Shift in focus in GWAS: from estimation of outcome (individual prediction) and of parameters (estimation of individual regression coefficients) – to estimation of prediction error itself (heritability, r2). Heritability estimation: which is better? Random effect models (GCTA) vs. fixed effect models (HERRA)? In Polygenic model with up to hundreds of causal SNPs: HERRA is better, using fast methods for variable screening. 4th talk: How do we infer hidden ancestry from genetic data? Eran offers statistical and computationally efficient solutions. Enables asking new scientific questions: (e.g. how socioeconomic factors’ influence on mating, etc.). Rare variants: how to take into account local correlations between SNPs? (LD). In current SPA model presented, SNP frequencies are assumed independent. 2nd talk: Allows Family Discovery Rate (FDR) to control over discoveries (not hypotheses), under the assumption that number of discoveries has a Poisson distribution. Problem: distribution of number of discoveries has overdispersion. Anil Dolgun Eastern North American Region (ENAR) In Memoriam: Professor Marvin Zelen Professor Marvin Zelen of the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health passed away on 15 November, 2014 at the age of 87. Professor Zelen was the Lemuel Shattuck Research Professor of Statistical Science, as well as a member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (Emeritus) at Harvard University. He served for a decade in the 1980s as Chair of the Department of Biostatistics and was known as a giant in the field, as well as a man of vision, generosity and warmth. Professor Zelen was known for developing the statistical methods and study designs that are used in clinical cancer trials, in which experimental drugs are tested for toxicity, effectiveness and proper dosage, as well as many other aspects of trial design. Professor Zelen has been recognized around the world through many awards and accolades, including being awarded the American Cancer Society’s highest honor – a Medal of Honor. For a full memoriam, see: http://www.hsph.harvard. edu/news/features/in-memoriam-prof-marvin-zelen-a-tremendousforce-in-biostatistics/. 2015 ENAR Spring Meeting, 15–18 March, Miami, Florida, USA The 2015 Spring Meeting of the IBS Eastern North American Region, in conjunction with the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS) and section of the American Statistical Association (ASA), will be held 15-18 March at the Hyatt Regency Miami. Miami is a global metropolis with booming international business, vibrant culture and has some of the best beaches in the world! People from all over come to Biometric Bulletin 10 Miami to enjoy the sunny weather, the exciting nightlife and the fine dining. Miami features activities sure to please all ENAR attendees, including the Bayside Market, an open-air mall, the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, and the Everglades National Park. The scientific program will once again be outstanding, with a wide variety of topics including data sciences (big data), genomics, clinical trials, neuroimaging, biomarkers, health policy, electronic health records, ecology and epidemiology. The Presidential Invited Speaker will be Dr. David L. DeMets, the Max Halperin Professor of Biostatistics and former Chair of the Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The title of his talk is “Big Data, Big Opportunities, Big Challenges.” Dr. DeMets has been an inspirational role model for more than a generation of biostatisticians working in clinical research and has literally written the book on Data Monitoring Committees! He is a past president of ENAR and of the Society for Clinical Trials. We are also very pleased that Dr. Tilmann Gneiting, Group Leader at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) and Professor of Computational Statistics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany will be presenting the IMS Medallion Lecture. Dr. Gneiting, also the editor for Physical Science, Computing, Engineering and the Environment at the Annals of Applied Statistics, will present a talk entitled “Uncertainty Quantification in Complex Simulation Models Using Ensemble Copula Coupling.” A complete listing of the many invited sessions to be presented at the meeting can be found at www.enar.org. In addition, the program will feature both full and half-day short courses by experts in their fields: “Bayesian clinical trials” (David Draper); “Statistical methods for fMRI and EEG data analysis” (Martin Lindquist & Hernando Ombao); “Design considerations in Early Phase Clinical Trials: Phase I, Phase I/ II Trials” (John O’Quigley & Alexia Iasonos); “Personalized Medicine and Dynamic Treatment Regimes” (Marie Davidian & Butch Tsiatis); and “Data Science and High-Performing Statistical Computing” (Marc A. Suchard & Martijn J. Schmuemie). In addition to the short courses, several tutorials will once again be offered, running concurrently with the scientific sessions. The topics range from group sequential designs using R to Bayesian computation using PROC MCMC, with many more! Additionally, roundtables will be offered again, allowing for an opportunity to interact with experts in their fields in a less formal setting. Many of the roundtables will focus on developing statisticians as leaders and are an opportunity to interact with some of the outstanding ENAR leaders! Once again, the Fostering Diversity in Biostatistics workshop will take place on Sunday afternoon, and Sunday evening will feature the new member reception, opening mixer and poster session, during which time the ENAR Regional Advisory Board Poster Competition will be held. The Council for Emerging and New Statisticians will hold a student mixer on Monday night and a Tuesday luncheon, to provide networking opportunities for students and recent graduates. Also, the Career Placement Center will take place throughout the meeting, to offer assistance to those seeking employment. The Tuesday night social event will take place at sea: a dinner cruise aboard the Biscayne Lady yacht. We will be picked up by boat at the Riverwalk in front of the hotel and will enjoy a memorable evening of breathtaking views of the Miami skyline, great food, nice conversation, music and dancing. ENAR is grateful for the outstanding service of the 2015 Program Committee Chair and Associate Chair, Mithat Gönen, and Brisa 11 Sánchez; IMS Program Chair, Lurdes Y.T. Inoue; local arrangements Chair Tülay Koru Şengül, and all of the committee members. 2015 JSM 8-13 August, Seattle, Washington, USA The Joint Statistical Meetings will return to Seattle, Washington in 2015, and ENAR is fortunate to have Olga Marchenko be our representative to the Program Committee. If you have ideas for the meeting, feel free to contact Olga: [email protected]. 2016 ENAR Spring Meeting, 6-9 March, Austin, Texas, USA Stay tuned for information about the 2016 ENAR Spring Meeting in Austin, Texas! ENAR Kicks Off a New Webinar Series! ENAR is pleased to announce a new education initiative: webinars! This initiative will promote continuing education for professional and student statisticians by disseminating cutting-edge knowledge to a wide audience. An ENAR webinar (or “webENAR”) can strengthen your background in methodology and software, provide an opportunity to learn about a topic outside of your primary area of specialization, or deepen your understanding of an area in which you already work. We invite you to participate and benefit from the expertise of some of North America’s leading statisticians and biostatisticians. The Webinar Committee of the ENAR Regional Advisory Board (RAB) is coordinating this ongoing series of one to two hour webinars given by renowned experts. Registration fees are by membership category, with a reduced fee for our student members. Note: As a benefit of ENAR membership, you may participate in one webinar per year at no charge. The webinars are planned to be broadly available, and we encourage groups at your institution or workplace to participate together. More details can be found at: http://www.enar. org/education/index.cfm. Leslie McClure Italian Region (RItl) The first Joint Meeting of the Austro-Swiss and Italian Regions will be held in Milan on 15-19 May 2015 – http://www.ibs-italy.info/ images/stories/jointmeeting/ibs_01.pdf. More information will follow at www.ibs-italy.info. Livio Finos Japanese Region (JR) The 2014 Japanese Joint Statistical Meeting The Biometric Society of Japan is one of the six sponsoring organizations of the meeting, and the 2014 Japanese Joint Statistical Meeting was held on 13-16 September at Hongo Campus of University of Tokyo in Tokyo. The Biometric Society of Japan organized the Biometric Symposium on recent advances in meta-analysis, which consists of an overview of network meta-analysis and its applications, meta-analysis of dose-response analysis, evaluation of surrogacy of endpoints and an introduction to the Japanese Cochrane Branch, which has been recently established. The Society also organized a session for a lecture by the winner of the Young Biostatisticians Biometric Bulletin Award presented by the Biometric Society of Japan. Dr. Hisashi Noma (Institute of Statistical Mathematics) gave us a lecture on multiple-imputation based methods for epidemiologic researches. Prof. Manabu Iwasaki (Seikei University), who is a member of the Biometric Society of Japan, gave a tutorial lecture on matching techniques in observational studies. People who contributed to the invited session entitled “Recent advances in meta-analysis” at the 2014 Japanese Joint Statistical Meeting: Drs.Teramukai (organizer),Yajyu, Noma, Oba, Fujii, and Takahashi (from left to right). 2014 Biometric Seminar The Biometric Seminar was held on 19-20 December, 2014 at the Campus Plaza Kyoto. The seminar provided tutorial lectures on multiplicity issues in clinical researches. The lectures began with classical methodology including Bonferroni-type methods and closed testing procedures, and covered advanced methodologies including fallback method, gatekeeping methods and graphical approaches. Lessons learned from real clinical trials were discussed from sponsor and regulatory perspectives. The Biometric Workshop A workshop will be held on 9 January 2015 at Kyoto University. The topic of the workshop is entitled “Educational program for professional biostatisticians.” Inappropriate data handling in several medical researches has been a social problem in Japan. Recently, the Biometric Society of Japan has released a statement on clinical research and an ethical guideline for biostatisticians. The workshop will consist of a lecture on the statement and the guideline and some related group works to fix understandings. The 2015Annual Meeting of the Biometric Society of Japan The 2015 Annual Meeting of the Biometric Society of Japan will be held on 12-13 March 2015 at Inamori Hall in Shirankaikan, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan. Brain imaging data are expected to be useful to overcome difficulties in diagnosis and prediction of outcome in various disease areas including Alzheimer disease. Due to the complicated and high-dimensional natures of brain imaging data, many statistical challenges arise. The Society is organizing an invited session on statistical issues in brain researches, and several talks will be presented from statistical and medical view points. Prof. Shigeyuki Matsui (Nagoya University), who is the winner of the Biometric Society of Japan Award 2014 for Outstanding Scientific Contribution, will give us a lecture on his recent contributions. A tutorial seminar will also be held on efficient use of medical record data in risk assessment of drugs. Satoshi Hattori 2015 Special Lecture The 2015 Special Lecture of the Biometric Society of Japan will be held on 9 January 2015 at the Kyoto University. Prof. Tosiya Sato (Kyoto University) will give a special talk entitled “The ICH Statistical Guideline: the Origin of the Concepts of Trial Statistician, FAS, and Non-inferiority Trial.” He will share with us his experience in developing the ICH E9 Guideline and discuss some practical issues. Biometric Bulletin 12 Polish Region (GPol) Zofia Hanusz 13 Biometric Bulletin Western North American Region (WNAR) 2015 WNAR Meeting The 2015 WNAR/IMS Meeting will be in Boise, Idaho from 21-24 June and hosted by Boise State University. Boise is located on the Boise River in southwestern Idaho and is the capital and most populous city in Idaho. There are a number of recreational activities available in Boise, include extensive hiking and biking opportunities in the foothills north of the town. The Boise River is a common destination for fishing, swimming, and rafting. The local organizer is Kyungduk Ko. Details about the meeting will be posted on the WNAR web page www.wnar.org as they become available. Announcements and News 2015 WNAR Student Paper Competition WNAR sponsors students who enter the student paper competition. All entrants receive their registration fees and banquet dinner ticket for free. Monetary prizes will be awarded to the best papers in written and oral competitions. Information on the 2015 WNAR Student Paper Competition, registration information, and program details for the meeting will be posted as they become available: http://www.wnar.org. We look forward to seeing you there. Megan Othus Call for IBC2016 Short Course Proposals IBS on LinkedIn - Join our Group & Get Connected to Colleagues Across the Globe IBS has created a LinkedIn Group for biometrics industry professionals to become a part of…and network with your colleagues instantaneously! Post discussions to the Group and get comments/feedback from Group members on their perspectives or experiences. A great benefit of this Group is that it’s a very easy and free way to communicate with your colleagues who live all around the world. Being connected to the IBS Group will allow you to see other connection possibilities as well and broaden your professional network. The possibilities are endless. Join our Group today by visiting www.linkedin. com, and search under Groups for ‘International Biometric Society.’ The Applied Public Health Statistics Section of the American Public Health Association (APHA) (https:// www.apha.org/apha-communities/member-sections/applied-public-health-statistics) invites nominations for the 2015 Mortimer Spiegelman Award, which honors a statistician below the age of 40 in the calendar year of the award who has made outstanding contributions to health statistics, especially public health statistics. The award was established in 1970 and is presented annually at the APHA meeting. The award serves the following three purposes: 1. To honor the outstanding achievements of both the recipient and Spiegelman. 2. To encourage further involvement in public health by the finest young statisticians. The IBS Education Committee, together with the International Program Committee of the 28th International Biometric Conference (IBC2016), to be held July 10–15 in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, is calling for proposals for short courses. Our goal is to provide courses that will attract registrants from a number of different application areas. We also want to reach out to potential participants from economically developing countries. Course selection will be by committee consensus and will take into account how the courses complement and enhance the scientific program of the IBC. A conference course is usually taught by one or more instructors on a topic that is of interest to many potential IBC participants. Normally, short courses are held on the Sunday before the start of the Conference, which will be July 10, 2016. The course can either last the full day (six – eight hours) or a half day (four hours). Proposals should include motivation, proposed content(s), and potential target audience of the course, as well as a description of the previous teaching experience and subject area expertise of the instructor(s). We also ask that the proposal include contact details of one – two participants of a previous course taught by the instructor(s) whom we may contact if needed. Please use the form (Please click here for the proposal template.) for the proposal and send it, preferably by email, to the Education Committee Chair, Pascale Tubert-Bitter at pascale. [email protected] with a copy to the IBS office at [email protected]. Proposals for short courses should be submitted electronically before March 16, 2015, and proposals will be selected by the Education Committee by June 15, 2015. 3. To increase awareness of APHA and the Applied Public Health Statistics Section in the academic statistical community. To be eligible, a candidate must have been born in 1976 or later. Please email a nominating letter that states the candidate’s date of birth and how their contributions relate to public health concerns, up to three letters of support, and the candidate’s CV to the Award Committee Chair, Amy Herring, at [email protected], by April 1, 2015. Biometric Bulletin 14 2016 International Biometric Conference Call for Invited Session Proposals The International Program Committee (IPC) of the XXVIIIth International Biometric Conference (IBC2016) calls for invited session proposals. IBC2016 will be held July 10–15 at the Victoria Conference Centre, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Victoria is named the ‘City of Gardens’ and provides easy access to recreational activities like kayaking, whale watching, hiking, and more. An invited session brings together a small number of speakers (two – four) on a particular statistical topic. In addition, a discussant may form part of a session. A discussant describes the latest research in an area of statistical theory or application and makes it accessible to a ‘non-expert’ audience. We encourage the submission of proposals covering a wide range of topics in the theory and application of statistics to biological and life sciences. Sessions that involve speakers from diverse geographical regions are encouraged where possible. Invited session proposals should be sent by email to the IBC2016 IPC Chairman, Fred van Eeuwijk: fred.vaneeuwijk@ wur.nl. Proposals should include: • Your name, affiliation, contact address, and email address • Suggested session title and keywords • Motivations for the proposed invitation • Suggested organizer (possibly yourself), speakers, and discussant • Tentative titles for the talks of invited speakers Use of a specific template is compulsory, see the IBC2016 website. Please note that a session organizer cannot be an invited speaker of the same session. Proposals should be submitted before 1 February 2015. Proposals will be evaluated by the IPC, and the authors will be informed by early March 2015 of acceptance, rejection or revision (on topic and speakers). Revised proposals will need to be resubmitted by 15 March 2015. By early April 2015, authors of revised proposals will be informed about the decision of the IPC for acceptance or rejection. (Acceptance of a proposal comes without financial compensations for the proposers of the session.) 15 Biometric Bulletin Biometric Bulletin 16 D onna Spiegelman, professor of epidemiologic methods at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), has received a Director’s Pioneer Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). One of 10 researchers honored, Spiegelman is believed to be the first epidemiologist and biostatistician, and the first faculty member from a school of public health, to receive the award. The five-year, $500,000/year prize recognizes “individual scientists of exceptional creativity, who propose pioneering, and possibly transforming, approaches to major challenges in biomedical and behavioral research,” according to the NIH website. Recipients, along with other awardees in the NIH Common Fund High-Risk High-Reward Program, will be honored at a symposium held December 15-17 at the NIH. Spiegelman intends to use this opportunity to refocus her career on the development of new methods needed to advance the field of implementation science — an area of research that seeks to establish through rigorous quantitative methods which public health interventions directed at achieving the same goal are most effective in the real world. The work will be directed towards public health interventions arising in environmental health, nutrition and chronic disease, and HIV/AIDS. Mathematics, statistics, computer science and epidemiologic methods will all be brought to bear. Empirical methods for costeffectiveness analysis, design and analysis of stepped wedge studies, methods which combine group-level and individual-level data to optimize resources, and causal inference methods for impact evaluation when interventions affect social or environmental networks, but only some subset of the network receive the intervention, are all topics she will address in the coming years. Throughout her career, Spiegelman has worked to develop biostatistical solutions to problems that arise in epidemiology. With over 500 publications to her name, she is the statistician for several long-running studies based at HSPH: the Nurses’ Health Study II, the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, and the Harvard PEPFAR site in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in addition to a host of studies that have grown out of these efforts. On her HSPH website, Spiegelman shares free software that helps researchers implement non-standard methods useful in epidemiologic research. “Winning this award is a tremendous honor,” said Spiegelman, who holds appointments in the School’s departments of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, Nutrition, and Global Health and Population. “It demonstrates a great deal of confidence in the work I’ve accomplished so far and that what I’m proposing to do is really worth the investment by the NIH in this very competitive and contracting funding environment.” 17 Biometric Bulletin MEETINGS 2015 26–29 May XXXV National Conference of the Spanish Statistical Society and IX Conference of Official Statistics Pamplona, Spain http://www.seiopamplona2015.es/es/ 9 January The Special Lecture and the Biometric Workshop Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan 7–10 June 12–16 January The 5th Nordic-Baltic Biometric Conference Reykjavik, Iceland International Conference on Robust Statistics 2015 Indian Statistical Institute Kolkata, India www.isical.ac.in/~icors2015/ 14–17 June 26–27 February Nonparametric analyses of complex time-to-event data Ulm, Germany http://www.biometrische-gesellschaft.de/en/arbeitsgruppen/nichtparametische-methoden.html 26–27 February Workshop: Semiparametric Methods in Survival Analysis Ulm, Germany 5–6 March Workshop Biometric aspects of genome analysis of working g zroups Population Genetics (IBS-DR) and Genome analysis and Genetic Epidemiology (DGEpi) and Human Genetics (GMDS) 12–13 March The 2015 Annual Meeting of the Biometric Society of Japan Inamori Hall in Shirankaikan, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan 15–18 March 2015 ENAR Spring Meeting Hyatt Regency Miami Miami, Florida http://www.enar.org/meetings.cfm 15–19 March IBS Channel Network Conference Nijmegen, The Netherlands http://www.ibschannel2015.nl/ 11–15 May 8th Eastern Mediterranean Region Conference Cappadocia, Turkey http://biostat.cu.edu.tr/emr2015 15–19 June Joint Meeting of the International Biometric Society Austro-Swiss and Italian Regions Milan, Italy http://www.ibs-italy.info/joint-meeting-ibs-austroswiss-italian-region.html 23–24 June Summer Meeting of Working Group Agricultural Experiments Potsdam-Bornim, Germany 1–3 July Summer School ‘Analysis of event times: Basics and new challenges’ Strobl am Wolfgangsee, Austria 6-10 July 30th International Workshop on Statistical Modelling Johannes Kepler University Linz (Austria) http://ifas.jku.at/iwsm2015/ 8–10 July Summer School ‘Semi- and nonparametric methods in Biometry’ of Working Group Nonparametric Methods Reisensburg near Ulm, Germany 61st Biometric Colloquium Dortmund, Germany http://www.statistik.tu-dortmund.de/Biom2015 20–22 April 2015 WNAR/IMS Annual Meeting Boise, Idaho, USA http://wnar.org/meetings/ 11–12 July Symposium on Evaluation of Clinical Trials Renmin University, Beijing, China http://www.ibschina.org.cn/ 20–24 July Joint 60th Brazilian Regional Meeting and 16th Brazilian Symposium of Applied Statistics for Agricultural Experimentation Presidente Prudente, Sao Paulo, Brazil http://sigeve.ead.unesp.br/paginas/din.php?p=40 Biometric Bulletin 18 MEETINGS (Cont.) 26–31 July 60th ISI World Statistics Congress Rio de Janeiro, Brazil http://www.isi-web.org/isi-wscs/isi-world-statistics-congresses 5–8 August 2016 6–9 March 2016 ENAR Spring Meeting Austin, TX 7th Regional Meeting of RCAC in conjunction with the 25th Colombian Statistics Symposium Quindio, Columbia http://www.simposioestadistica.unal.edu.co/ 8–13 August 2015 JSM Washington State Convention and Trade Center Seattle, Washington 23–27 August 36th Annual Conference of the International Society for Clinical Biostatistics Utrecht, The Netherlands http://www.iscb2015.info/ 5–9 September Annual Conference of the German Association for Medical Informatics Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences in Krefeld http://www.gmds2015.de/ 23–25 September XVth Spanish Biometric Conference and Vth IberoAmerican Biometric Meeting Bilbao, Spain http://www.ehu.es/CEB-EIB2015 28–30 October Jamaica Statistics Symposium 30 November–4 December The International Biometric Society Australasian Region Conference Hadley Hotel, Horbart, Tasmania, Australia http://www.biometricsociety.org.au/ 19 Biometric Bulletin