Edited by Brian Caffo, Biometrics Section Publications Officer
Recap of the 2006 JSM
The Biometrics Section held its annual Business Meeting at the 2006 JSM in Seattle Washington.
The highlight of the meeting was the announcement that Sunduz Keles, an assistant professor in the Department of Statistics and Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is this year's winner of the David P Byar Young Investigator Award. With the award Dr. Keles received a $1000 cash award for her paper, "Mixture modeling for genome-wide localization of transcription factors.” In addition, Xiaomin Lu, a graduate student in the Department of Statistics at North Carolina State University, was awarded a $500 Young Investigator Travel Award for her paper "Improving efficiency of the logrank test using auxiliary covariates". Congratulations to Sunduz and Xiaomin from the Biometrics Section!
Also at the Business Meeting, Tom Tenhave, the current Chair Elect, introduced Jeremy Taylor as the Section’s Chair Elect for 2007. In addition, Runze Li was introduced as the 2007 JSM Program Chair, Mahlet Tadesse as the incoming Continuing Education Chair, Bonnie LaFleur as the chair of a subcommittee being formed on the section’s strategic initiatives (see below), John Preisser as the section’s representative to the 2007 ENAR Meeting Program Committee and Ralitza Gueorguieva as incoming Publications Officer.
Biometrics Section Representative to the Council Sections Susan Groshen reported that this year’s JSM was one of the most highly attended. In addition she outlined ASA initiatives involving the construction of a new headquarters, new membership drives, and the creation of a science policy task force. ASA wished to highlight its SPAIG (Statistical Partnerships among Academe, Industry and Government) initiative, welcoming applications and nominations from its members.
Karen Bandeen-Roche reported on behalf of Jeff Morris that the Biometrics Section has sponsored two invited sessions and co-sponsored a third at the recent ENAR Spring Meeting in Tampa. Misrak Gezmu reported that two continuing education classes have been selected for the 2007 JSM, with a third under negotiation. Runze Li reported that 7 invited sessions have been chosen from among 11 submissions to represent the Section for the 2007 JSM. Four of these are allocated, the other three will compete for open slots. Members should keep in mind that all are welcome to organize topic contributed paper sessions for next year's meeting. Jeff, Misrak, and Runze's excellent efforts in organizing Section programs were applauded. Look to future issues of the Biometrics Section's Amstat News Column for more information about these and other sponsored activities.
The Section discussed its continued efforts in increasing interest in biostatistics among high school and undergraduate students. Past strategic initiatives in 2004, and 2005 were reviewed where investigated initiated grants were funded to develop case-study centered materials for high school and undergraduate classroom use, raise awareness of Biostatistics in presentations at colleges, universities, and undergraduate student conferences, and to construct a metaweb page consolidating links to institutions offering biostatistics training. A 2006 call for new proposals has just been issued. To better develop and apply procedures to evaluate success of completed initiatives, and to more systematically guide the development and direction of future strategic initiatives, a subcommittee was created for which Bonnie LaFleur has kindly offered to chair. At the Business meeting she outlined her plans and welcomes further input from the section.
Finally, the Section would like to thank Mike Daniels and Misrak Gezmu for their great job in organizing the Section's sponsored events for this JSM, which included 7 invited sessions, 6 topic contributed sessions, 44 regular contributed sessions and 2 well attended continuing education classes!
Nominations Sought for the 2007 Byar Young Investigator Award
Are you, or perhaps a student you know, thinking about preparing an abstract for the 2007 Joint Statistical Meetings? If so, please note that the Biometrics Section will be seeking nominations for the David P. Byar Young Investigator Award. This annual award is given to a young investigator (within 3 years after receiving doctorate, or currently pursuing a doctorate) for the best paper to be presented at the JSM. The award is in memory of David Byar, an internationally known biostatistician who made significant contributions to the development and application of statistical methods 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.
The deadline for applications will be April 1, 2007, and requires the submission of a complete paper and that the applicant is a member of the Biometrics Section of the ASA. Further details will be provided in this space in upcoming issues of Amstat News, or see www.bio.ri.ccf.org/Biometrics/dbyar.html.