BIOMETRICS SECTION NEWS, JULY 2012

Edited by Songthip Ounpraseuth , Biometrics Section Publications Officer

2012 David P. Byar Young Investigator Award Winners
The David P. Byar Young Investigator Award is given annually to a new researcher in the Biometrics Section who presents an original manuscript at the Joint Statistical Meetings. T he award commemorates David Byar, a renowned biostatistician who made significant contributions to the development and application of statistical methods during his career at the National Cancer Institute. This year, w e received a record high of 62 submissions of high quality papers.  The Byar Award Committee consisted of J. Jack Lee (Committee Chair, MD Anderson), Dianne Finkelstein (Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard University), Jianwen Cai (University of North Carolina), David Schoenfeld (Harvard University), Joanna Shih (National Cancer Institute), and Guosheng Yin (University of Hong Kong).  Through an anonymous review process, the committee chose eight travel award winners in addition to the Byar Award winner. 

David P Byar Young Investigator Award

• Yang Ning, Johns Hopkins University, "Reducing the sensitivity to nuisance parameters in nonstandard likelihood" with co-author Kung-Yee Liang.

Travel Awards

• Huaihou Chen, Columbia University, "A marginal approach to reduced-rank penalized spline smoothing with application to multilevel functional data" with co-authors Yuanjia Wang, Myunghee Cho Paik, and H. Alex Choi.
  
• Shuo Chen, Emory University, "A Bayesian Hierarchical Framework for Modeling Brain Connectivity of Neuroimaging Data" with co-author F. DuBois Bowman.
  
• Jeff Goldsmith, Johns Hopkins University, "Corrected Confidence Bands for Functional Data Using Principal Components" with co-authors Sonja Greven and Ciprian Crainiceanu.
  
• Min Jin Ha, University of North Carolina, "Testing and estimation of partial correlation networks" with co-author Fred A. Wright.
  
• Peisong Han, University of Michigan, "Conditional Empirical Likelihood Inference for Unbalanced Longitudinal Data" with co-authors Peter X.-K. Song and Lu Wang.
  
• Yen-Tsung Huang, Harvard University, "Joint Analysis of SNP and Gene Expression Data in Genome-Wide Association Studies" with co-authors Xihong Lin and Tyler VanderWeele.
  
• Han Liu, Johns Hopkins University, "The Nonparanormal skeptic" with co-authors Fang Han, Ming Yuan, John Lafferty, and Larry Wasserman.
  
• Jennifer Sinnott, Harvard University, "Omnibus Risk Assessment via Accelerated Failure Time Kernel Machine Modeling" with co-author Tianxi Cai.

Byar Award winner will receive a $1,500 cash award and Travel Award winners each will receive an $800 cash award to present their papers at the JSM. The committee was very pleased with the response and the exceptional quality of the applications.

The ASA Biometrics Section congratulates the award winners and committee members for their superb work.  Our JSM Program Chair, Timothy Johnson, has organized two Topic Contributed Sessions for the award winner at this year's JSM in San Diego.  Dr. Joanna Shih will be the discussant for one of the sessions. Both of t he David P. Byar Young Investigator Award topic contributed papers sessions will be held on Monday, July 30 th . Session 1 will be from 8:30 am - 10:30 am in room CC-Room 25A and Session 2 will be from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm in room CC-Room 25A.

Biometrics Section Mixer & Business Meeting at JSM 2012
Please join us at the Biometrics Section Mixer & Business Meeting at the 2012 JSM in San Diego, CA! It will be held on Monday, July 30 th from 5:30 - 7:00 p.m. in the Hilton Bayfront San Diego in Room Aqua 307 and is an excellent networking opportunity. The 2012 David P. Byar Young Investigator Award and Section Travel Awards will be presented at the Mixer . Also, this will be an opportunity for Section members to get an update from the Biometrics Section Executive Committee. Hors d'oeuvre and beverages will be served. The Mixer is open to all JSM attendees. We hope to see you there!

Exciting Program at the 2012 JSM
The Biometrics Section is pleased to sponsor four CE courses and six invited sessions at the 2012 Joint Statistical Meetings in San Diego, CA. The titles, instructors, and organizers are given below.

CE Courses

1. Hongzhe Li and Wei Pan (U Penn and U. of Minnesota): Statistical Methods for Genome-Wide Association, Copy Number Variants and Rare Variants Analysis
• Sat, 7/28, 8:30 am to 5:00 pm, Room: HQ-Indigo 202
  
2. Yuedong Wang (UC Santa Barbara): Smoothing Splines: Methods and Applications
• Sun, 7/29, 8:30 am to 5:00 pm, Room: HQ-Indigo 202
  
3. Rod Little and Trivellore Raghunath (U. of Michigan): Statistics Analysis with Missing Data
• Mon, 7/30, 8:30 am to 5:00 pm, Room: HQ-Indigo E
  
4. Tianxi Cai and Yingye Zheng (Harvard and Fred Hutchinson): Design and Analysis of Biomarker Studies for Risk Prediction
• Tue, 7/31, 8:30 am to 5:00 pm, Room: HQ-Indigo E

Invited Sessions

•  Recent Methodology Developed for the Design of Early-Phase Clinical Trials, Organizer: Thomas Braun

•  Sun, 7/29, 2:00 pm to 3:50 pm, Room: CC-Room 26A

•  Statistical challenges and innovative solutions for correlated data, Organizer: Peiyong (Annie) Qu

•  Mon, 7/30, 2:00 pm to 3:50 pm, Room: HQ Sapphire C

•  Statistical methods for high-dimensional complex-structured object data, Organizer : Veera Baladandayuthapani

•  Tue, 7/31, 2:00 pm to 3:50 pm, Room: HQ Sapphire C

•  Biomarkers for Risk Prediction, Disease Detection, and Treatment Effect Estimation: Statistical Issues, Organizer: Layla Parast

•  Wed, 8/01, 8:30 am to 10:20 am, Room: HQ Sapphire L

•  Shrinkage estimation: Unifying different perspectives, Organizer: Bhramar Mukherjee

•  Wed, 8/01, 2:00 pm to 3:50 pm, Room: HQ Sapphire B

•  New Methodological Advances in Network-Based Analysis of Omics Data, Organizer: Ali Shojaie

•  Thu, 8/02, 8:30 am to 10:20 am, Room: HQ Sapphire B

The Biometrics Section thanks Annie Qu, our JSM Continuing Education Chair, and Timothy D. Johnson, our JSM Program Chair, for their wonderful job in organizing these courses and sessions. Check the online program at the 2012 JSM web site (available through the ASA web site www.amstat.org ) for updates on locations and times.  

JSM 2013
It's also time to start thinking about invited sessions for next year's Joint Statistical Meetings, which will be held August 3-8 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Anyone who is interested in organizing an invited session or who has ideas for one, please contact our 2013 Program Chair, Wei Sun at wsun@bios.unc.edu .

A typical invited session consists of three 30-minute talks followed by a 10-minute invited discussion and 10 minutes of floor discussion. However, other formats are possible. The 2012 program is a good source for examples.

Remember, the most mature ideas will have an advantage in competing for the limited number of slots, so it's best to have your ideas in final form by the middle of June. The Biometrics Section will have at least four invited sessions, but if we generate enough good ideas we will be able to compete for additional slots as well.

Please also submit ideas for short courses our 2013-2014 Continuing Education Chair Donglin Zeng at dzeng@email.unc.edu.