BIOMETRICS SECTION NEWSLETTER, February 2009
Edited by Page Moore , Biometrics Section Publications Officer
WELCOME 2009 SECTION OFFICERS!
The Biometrics Section would like to introduce you to the current members of the Section's Executive Committee. Before doing so we offer a well deserved “Thank You!” to the outgoing officers.
Tom Ten Have is the outgoing Past Section Chair and has completed three years of service as Chair-Elect, Chair, and Past Chair. Tom is a Professor in the Department of Biostatistics & Epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania 's School of Medicine . Tom joined the Biostatistics faculty at Penn in 1997, after five years at the Center for Biostatistics & Epidemiology at the Penn State University College of Medicine in Hershey. His statistical research interests are in categorical data analysis, random effects models, informative dropout, and causal modeling of treatment non-adherence, mediation and post-randomization stratification of complex behavioral interventions.
The Section Chair for 2009 is Daniel Heitjan. Dan is a Professor of Biostatistics and Statistics at the University of Pennsylvania . He previously worked at UCLA (1985-1988), Penn State (1988-1995) and Columbia University (1995-2002). His research is in the areas of incomplete data, clinical trials, longitudinal studies, health economics and pharmacogenomics. His collaborative work has been predominantly in cancer, cardiac surgery and smoking cessation research.
Dan takes over from Jeremy Taylor (Section Chair 2008). Jeremy is the Pharmacia Research Professor of Biostatistics and a Professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology in the School of Medicine at the University of Michigan . He received his Ph.D. in Statistics from UC Berkeley and was on the faculty at UCLA from 1983 to 1998, when he moved to the University of Michigan . He has worked in various areas of statistics and biostatistics, including Box-Cox transformations, longitudinal and survival analysis, cure models, missing data, smoothing methods, surrogate and auxiliary variables. He has been heavily involved in collaborations in the areas of radiation oncology, cancer research and bioinformatics.
Our Chair-Elect for 2010 is Barry Graubard . Barry is a Senior Investigator in the Biostatistics Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute (NCI), where he works on statistical methods for epidemiologic and genetic analysis of data from national health surveys with complex sample designs. Barry received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from University of Maryland , College Park . He has been at NCI since 1990 and had previously worked at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Alcohol Drug Abuse and Mental Health Administration, and National Center for Health Statistics. He collaborates in a variety of areas of cancer and public health research including diet and body size related to cancer and other causes of mortality, cancer screening, cancer surveillance, epidemiology of testicular cancer, and family history of cancer.
We welcome Tom Belin, who will be serving as our Secretary/Treasurer, taking over for Jianwen Cai (Secretary/Treasurer 2007–2008). Tom is a Professor in the UCLA Department of Biostatistics, where he has worked on incomplete-data methods and in a variety of applied areas including mental health research, cancer prevention and control, health services research, and public-health dentistry. He received his Ph.D. in Statistics in 1991 from Harvard, and among other professional interactions with Executive Board members, he worked closely with Jeremy Taylor when Jeremy was at UCLA.
Wensheng Guo is the Biometrics Section Program Chair for the 2009 JSM. Wensheng is Associate Professor in the Department of Biostatistics & Epidemiology, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He joined the biostatistics faculty at the University of Pennsylvania upon receiving his Ph.D. in Biostatistics from the University of Michigan in 1998. His research interests are on nonparametric regression, time series analysis and longitudinal data analysis.
Hormuzd Katki will serve as Section Program Chair for the 2010 JSM. Hormuzd is a Staff Scientist in the Biostatistics Branch of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics in the National Cancer Institute. He received his Ph.D. in Biostatistics from Johns Hopkins University . His primary research interests are in individualized models to predict risk of disease (cervical cancer) or of carrying highly-penetrant mutations ( BRCA1/2 ), two-phase designs for epidemiologic studies nested within cohorts (R package NestedCohort), and statistical issues involving cancers related to human papilloma virus.
Jerry Heatley follows Mahlet Tadesse as our Continuing Education Chair. Jerry is the Senior Manager of Clinical Data Systems at Thoratec Corporation. Thoratec is a medical device company and the world leader in ventricular assist device technology. Prior to joining Thoratec, Jerry worked as a Research Associate in Statistics for the Lahey Clinic Medical Center in Burlington MA .
Jinbo Chen will serve as the Biometrics Section Program Chair for the 2009 ENAR Meeting Program. Jinbo is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Biostatistics & Epidemiology, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. She received her Ph.D. in Biostatistics from the University of Washington in 2002, and subsequently worked as a research fellow at the Biostatistics Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute. She joined the faculty of biostatistics at UPenn in 2006. Her primary research interests include statistical methods in genetic epidemiology, missing data problems, and collaborative research in cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and reproductive health.
Our Biometrics Section Program Chair for the 2010 ENAR Meeting Program is Liang Li . Liang is Assistant Staff at Department of Quantitative Health Sciences, Cleveland Clinic. He received his Ph.D. in Statistics from University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2003. His main areas of research include measurement error models, varying coefficient models, joint analysis of longitudinal and survival data, and statistical applications in cardiac and thoracic surgeries.
Diana Miglioretti continues as a Council of Sections representative. She will serve in this role for 2007-2009. Diana is an Associate Scientific Investigator at the Group Health Center for Health Studies and an Affiliate Associate Professor at the University of Washington , Department of Biostatistics. She obtained her Ph.D. in Biostatistics at John Hopkins University . Her primary research interests are in statistical issues related to breast cancer screening. These include the evaluation of screening and diagnostic tests, the assessment of screening patterns over time, and the modeling of multivariate, longitudinal, and clustered data.
Michael Daniels is our second Council of Sections representative. He will serve in this role for 2008-2010. Michael is a Professor in the Department of Statistics and the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Florida . He received his doctorate from Harvard and was on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University and Iowa State University before moving to Florida . His research interests in include Bayesian statistics, biostatistics, hierarchical modeling, and estimation of covariance matrices.
Additionally, Denise Roe begins a term as our third Council of Sections representative, reflecting that our section membership has exceeded the count of 2000 once again. Denise is a Professor in the Epidemiology & Biostatistics Division of the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health at The University of Arizona. She received a M.S. in Biometrics from the University of Colorado , and a Dr.P.H. in Biostatistics from UCLA. She has been on the faculty of the University of Arizona since 1988. Her statistical research interests include developing and evaluating statistical methods useful in clinical trials, prevention studies, pharmacokinetics, and longitudinal studies. She collaborates with cancer and public health researchers in the design, conduct and statistical analysis of clinical, prevention and laboratory studies.
Bonnie LaFleur will continue to serve as the Chair of the Strategic Initiatives Committee. Bonnie obtained her doctorate in Biometrics in 1999 from the University of Colorado in Denver and was an Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center until 2007. She is currently on the faculty in the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Arizona 's Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health. Her research interests include permutation and nonparametric statistics, generalized linear models and analysis of linear and nonlinear mixed models.
Page Moore will be taking over for Ralitza Gueorguieva as the Section's Publication officer. Page received her doctorate in statistics from Baylor University in 2006 and has been a faculty member in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences since 2006. Her main research interests are in multiple imputation techniques, longitudinal data analysis, computational statistics, and clinical trial design.
Gerald Beck is our Amstat Online Assistant Editor (also known as our Webmaster). He is Acting Chair of the Department of Biostatistics & Epidemiology at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. His primary interest is in the design, conduct, and analysis of clinical trials. He serves as Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator of data coordinating centers for multi-center clinical studies supported by NIH, including the Dialysis Access Consortium (DAC) and the Hemodialysis (HEMO) Study.
INTERESTED IN HELPING OUT AT THE JSM?
Want to get more involved in JSM but not planning to submit an abstract? Consider volunteering to chair a session. This is an important responsibility and a great way to meet your colleagues. If you are interested, contact our Section's 2009 Program Chair, Wensheng Guo, at (wguo@mail.med.upenn.edu). NOMINATIONS SOUGHT FOR 200 9 BYAR YOUNG INVESTIGATOR AWARD AND BIOMETRICS SECTION TRAVEL AWARDS Do you know a young investigator who is planning to submit an abstract for the 200 9 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM)? If so, you may wish to alert that individual that the ASA Biometrics Section is seeking nominations for the 200 9 David P. Byar Young Investigator Award. This annual award is given to a young investigator for best emerging work to be presented at the JSM. The award is in memory of David Byar, a biostatistician who made significant contributions to the development and application of statistical methods and was esteemed as an exceptional mentor during his career at the National Cancer Institute. The winner will receive a $1,000 cash award.
In addition to the Byar Award, the Section may also provide additional travel awards to the authors of other outstanding papers that are submitted to the Byar Award competition. Applicants must meet the following criteria:
Applicants are encouraged but not required to submit their abstract to the Biometrics Section. For the 2009 competition, the application materials should consist of, in electronic format:
Applicants are also invited to submit one copy each of supplementary published or in-press papers if they compose a body of scientific work related to the paper to be presented. If these are not available electronically, please contact the Chair of the committee at the e-mail address below.
The 2009 Awards Committee, chaired by Dr. Jeremy Taylor, is composed of the 2009 current and past section Chairs and Chair-Elect as well as three additional individuals to be appointed by the section Chairs prior to the competition. Information regarding this award is also available on the Section webpage, easily accessed by clicking on the “Section” tab at the top of the ASA website ( www.amstat.org ).
All materials, including the paper, must be submitted electronically on or before March 1, 2009 . Applications and questions should be sent to Jeremy Taylor at jmgt@umich.edu.
We emphasize that the award is for young investigators with novel methodological research.