BIOMETRICS SECTION NEWSLETTER, February 2012

Edited by Songthip Ounpraseuth, Biometrics Section Publications Officer

 

WELCOME 2012 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 members.

 

Barry Graubard is the outgoing Past Section Chair and has completed three years of service as Chair-Elect, Chair, and Past Chair. 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.

 

J Jack Lee is the outgoing Section Chair. We thank him for his excellent service in the past year. He will assume the Past Chair position. Jack is a Professor of Biostatistics within the department of Biostatistics at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. He also holds an Adjunct Professor position at Rice University and at the University of Texas School of Public Health. He received his Ph.D. in Biostatistics from the University of California at Los Angeles. Jack ‘s area of research interest include design and analysis of clinical trials, survival analysis, longitudinal data analysis, statistical computation/graphics, statistical methods for determining drug interaction in combination studies and cancer chemoprevention.

The Section Chair for 2012 is Dianne Finkelstein. Dianne is the Director of Biostatistics at Mass General Hospital in Boston. She is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a Professor of Biostatistics in the department of Biostatistics at Harvard School of Public Health. She received her Ph.D. in Biostatistics from the University of Michigan. Dianne ‘s areas of research interest include design and analysis of cancer and AIDS clinical trials and epidemiology studies, analysis of interval censored data, survival analysis and longitudinal data analysis. She is the PI for the NCI-supported Cancer Genetics Registry and has an interest in rare and inherited cancers.

 

Our Chair-elect for 2013 is Jianwen Cai. Jianwen is Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Biostatistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her Ph.D. in Biostatistics from University of Washington. Her research interests include multivariate survival analysis, cost effective study designs, analysis of correlated responses, and longitudinal data analysis. She collaborates in the areas of cardiovascular disease, obesity, cancer, and dental research. She is the PI for the coordinating center for NHLBI sponsored Hispanic Community Health Study / Study of Latinos.

 

Debashis Ghosh continues serving as our secretary/treasurer. Debashis is a Professor in the Department of Statistics at Penn State University with a joint appointment in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the Penn State College of Medicine. He received his Ph.D. in Biostatistics from the University of Washington. Debashis previously taught at the University of Michigan. His research interests include analysis of high-dimensional data, design and analysis of genomic studies, survival analysis, longitudinal data analysis, cancer biomarkers, machine learning and observational data.

 

Timothy D. Johnson follows Tianxi Cai as the Biometrics Section Program Chair to the 2012 JSM Program Committee. Tim is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Michigan. He received his PhD in Biostatistics from UCLA and was an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomathematics at UCLA prior to moving to Michigan. His research interests include Bayesian methods, MCMC simulation, statistical image analysis and point process modeling.

 

 

Daniel Scharfstein follows Jason Fine as the Biometrics Section Program Chair for the 2012 ENAR Meeting Program. Daniel is a Professor and director of the graduate program in the Department of Biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He received his pre and post doctoral training from the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health. He research focus on how to draw inferences about treatment effects in the presence of selection bias. Specifically, he is interested in how to report results in randomized trials with informative missing or censored data and in observational studies with non-random treatment assignment.

 

Mousumi Banerjee continues as our 2010-2012 Council of Sections representative. Mousumi is a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Michigan in the School of Public Health. She received her Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her previous appointments include Assistant Professor at the State University of New York in Buffalo and at Wayne State University, and Associate Professor at Wayne State University. She also held visiting faculty appointments at the University of Pretoria and the University of Calcutta. Mousumi's current research interests include tree-structured regression and ensemble methods for censored data, survival analysis with competing risks, and multilevel models in health services research applications. She is also a member of the UM Comprehensive Cancer Center.

 

Page Moore continues as our 2011-2013 Representative to the Council of Sections. 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.

 

Denise Roe is the outgoing Representative to the Council of Sections. Denise is a Professor in the Epidemiology & Biostatistics Division of the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health at The University of Arizona. The Biometrics Section thanks her for her dedicated service as a Council of Sections representative in the past three years.

 

Scarlett L. Bellamy is our 2012-2014 Representative to the Council of Sections. She has been a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania, Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology since completing her doctoral studies at Harvard in 2001. Scarlett's research interests are focused on the methodological issues related to the design and analysis of cluster-randomized trials. She is particularly interested in applying this methodology to community-based research projects and to projects which address health disparities for a variety of clinical and behavioral health outcomes. Additionally, she participates in a number of diversity initiatives to increase representation of students and professionals from a variety of backgrounds in statistics.

 

Annie Qu continues serving as the Continuing Education Chair. Annie is a Professor of Statistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was a faculty member at Oregon State University from 1999 to 2008, and has been a visiting faculty in the Biostatistics Department at University of Washington and at the MD Anderson Cancer Center. She received her Ph.D. in Statistics at Penn State University. Annie's research interests include estimating equations, longitudinal data analysis, missing data, nonparametric models and model selection.

 

Roslyn Stone continues serving as the Chair of the Strategic Initiatives Committee. Rosyn is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Pittsburgh. She received her doctorate in biostatistics from the University of Washington. Her research interests are in generalized linear models, survival analysis, multi-level models, statistical methods for occupational and environmental epidemiology, guideline implementation, and cluster-randomized studies.

 

Songthip Ounpraseuth continues as the Section's Publication officer through 2012. Song received his doctorate in statistics from Baylor University and has been a faculty member in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences since 2006. His main research interests are in classification, error estimation, dimension reduction, and computational statistics.

 

Gerald Beck is our Amstat Online Assistant Editor (also known as our Webmaster). He is Head of the Clinical Trials Section in the Department of Quantitative Health Sciences at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. His primary interest is in the design, conduct, and analysis of clinical trials. He serves as Principal Investigator of Data Coordinating Centers (DCC) for multi-center clinical studies supported by NIH, including the Frequent Hemodialyis Network (FHN) Trials and the Hemodialysis Fistula Maturation (HFM) Study.

 

INTERESTED IN HELPING OUT AT THE JSM?

 

Want to get more involved in JSM? Consider volunteering to chair a session. Chairing a session is an important responsibility and a great way to meet your colleagues. If you are interested, contact our Section's 2012 Program Chair, Timothy Johnson, at (tdjtdj@umich.edu).

 

CALL FOR PROPOSALS: DEVELOPING THE NEXT GENERATION OF BIOSTATISTICIANS

 

The ASA Biometrics Section invites applications for funding to support projects developing innovative outreach projects focused on enhancing awareness of biostatistics among quantitatively talented US students. We particularly are interested in projects that will encourage students to pursue advanced training in biostatistics. We anticipate funding up to three projects, with total funding of up to $3,000 per project. All investigators are encouraged to apply.

 

A three-page application is due February 29, 2012 and should be in the following format: Title, Objectives and Specific Aims; Background, Significance, and/or Rationale; Design and Methods; and Budget. The following types of expenditures are allowed: supplies, domestic travel when necessary to carry out the project, professional expertise (e.g., instructional designer or webmaster) and cost of computer time. The following types of expenditures are not allowed: secretarial/administrative personnel, tuition, foreign travel, and honoraria and travel expenses for visiting lecturers to the investigator's home institution. A project period with a start date no earlier than March 15, 2012 and an end date no later than December 31, 2012 also should be specified.

 

Applications should be submitted electronically to the Strategic Initiatives Subcommittee Chair, Roslyn Stone, at Roslyn@pitt.edu. All investigators will be expected to submit a brief report at the conclusion of the project to the Subcommittee Chair.