BIOMETRICS SECTION NEWSLETTER, OCTOBER 2011

Edited by Songthip Ounpraseuth, Biometrics Section Publications Officer

Recap of the 2011 JSM

The Biometrics Section held its annual Business Committee Meeting at the 2011 JSM in Miami Beach, FL. Complete minutes of the meeting will soon be made available on the Section website (http://www.bio.ri.ccf.org/Biometrics).

Section Chair J. Jack Lee called the meeting to order, welcomed members and guests, and introduced the members of the Executive Committee.  The minutes of last year's meeting were distributed and accepted.

Dianne Finkelstein provided information on additional appointments and nominations for 2012.  Appointed the 2012 JSM Program Chair (Tim Johnson) and the 2012 ENAR Program Chair (Daniel Scharfstein).  Also, Jianwen Cai was nominated and won the election for the new Chair elect-elect.  Finally, Scarlett Bellamy was nominated and won the election for the COS Representative for 2012-2014. 

Section Chair J. Jack Lee spoke for Jason Fine regarding ENAR 2011.  The Annual ENAR Meeting was held in Miami, Florida from March 20 to 30, 2011. The program committee received roughly 60 proposals for invited sessions. Of these, 17 were sponsored by ASA Biometrics Section, a large increase over previous years, due in part to a 50% increase in the total number of invited sessions. Sessions were scored by each member of the program committee, with the average score used to rank sessions. Sessions sponsored by the ASA Biometrics Section were scored highly by the Section program chair and ranked highly among all reviewers. Topics covered included functional and high dimensional data analysis, the analysis of complex imaging data, including fMRI and neuroimaging, and applications in genetics, proteomics, and other complex biological systems. In addition, 10 poster sessions and 23 contributed paper sessions were sponsored by the ASA Biometrics Section.

Tianxi Cai spoke about the 2011 JSM program.  The biometrics section organized a total of 9 invited sessions including 6 as the primary sponsor and 3 as co-sponsors. The topics include risk prediction and classification with high dimensional data, survival analysis, statistical genomics, non- and semi-parametric methods, as well as dimension reduction methods. In addition, there are 9 topic contributed sessions with topics ranging from design and analysis of clinical trials to analysis of complex studies with high dimensional predictors or missing information on either the outcome due to censoring or on the predictors due to risk set sampling. This year's David P. Byar Young Investigator award session honored 5 young researchers receiving the ASA Biometrics travel award.

Barry Graubard gave a brief account on David Byar, after whom the section's young investigator award is named.  Byar started with medical training but recognized early in his career the importance of statistics, and in addition to his individual contributions to biostatistical methods in cancer research, he had a great gift for identifying talented individuals and inspiring them to greater heights, which he exhibited in multiple leadership roles at the National Cancer Institute.  More information on the wonderful legacy of David P. Byar will be made available on the section web site.

This year, there were 26 papers submitted to the Byar Award Committee, which consisted of Barry Graubard, Committee Chair (National Cancer Institute), Jack Lee (MD Anderson), Dianne Finkelstein (Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard University), Kathy Cronin (National Cancer Institute), Joanna Shih (National Cancer Institute, Peter Kraft (Harvard University). The committee chose five travel award winners in addition to the Byar award winner.

Daniela Witten, University of Washington, is this year's winner of the David P Byar Young Investigator Award and received a $1500 cash award for the paper "Penalized Classification using Fisher's Linear Discriminant" which was presented at this JSM.

This year's travel award winners are:

Genevera Allen, Rice University, for the paper titled, "A Generalized Least Squares Matrix Decomposition"

Qunhua Li, University of California at Berkeley, for the paper titled, "Measuring Reproducibility of High-Throughput Experiments"

Jessica Minnier, Harvard University, for the paper titled, "Risk Classification with an Adaptive Naive Bayes Kernel Machine Model"

Layla Parast, Harvard University, for the paper titled, "Landmark Prediction of Long Term Survival Incorporating Short Term Event Time Information"

Sihai Dave Zhao, Harvard University, for the paper titled, "Grouped Variable Selection via Hierarchical Models"

Congratulations to the award winners on their notable accomplishments!

Finally, Roslyn Stone (Chair, Strategic Initiatives) announced that the winner of the 'Developing the next Generation of Biostatisticians' initiative from January was a proposal by Jane Monaco and Amy Herring. 

APPLICATIONS INVITED FOR 2012 BYAR YOUNG INVESTIGATOR AWARD AND BIOMETRICS SECTION TRAVEL AWARDS

Do you know a young investigator who is planning to submit an abstract for the 2012 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM)? If so, you may wish to alert that individual that the ASA Biometrics Section is seeking applications for the 2012 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 commemorates the late 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 $1,500 cash award.

In addition to the Byar Award, the Section may provide travel awards to the authors of other outstanding papers that are submitted to the competition.

Applicants must meet the following criteria:

• Have held a doctorate in statistics, biostatistics or a related quantitative field for three years or less as of April 1 of the current year, or be currently enrolled as a student in a doctoral program in statistics or biostatistics and in active pursuit of a doctoral degree.
• Be a current member of the Biometrics Section (applicant may join at the time of submission for a $5 annual membership fee [$3 for students]). Please note that membership in ASA does not automatically confer Section membership; ASA members must join individual sections in addition to their generic membership.
• Be first author of the paper. The paper may be unsubmitted, submitted or under review, but may not have already appeared in a journal either on-line or in print at the time of the application or have been accepted for publication as of January 1 of 2012.
• Be scheduled to present the same paper submitted for the Award at the 2012 Joint Statistical Meetings in San Diego, CA as either a talk or poster.
• Not have submitted the paper to any other ASA section 2012 student/young investigator award competition.

Applicants must submit their JSM abstracts to the Biometrics Section, which will organize a series of Topic Contributed sessions to highlight the Byar award and travel awards winners.

Please note that to better coordinate with the JSM program committee, we have move the submission deadline to January 1, 2012.

Applicants should complete their application by submitting the following materials:

• A cover letter certifying that the applicant meets the eligibility requirements and is not submitting the paper to any other ASA section student/young investigator award competition.
• A current CV.
• One copy of the finished paper.

All materials must be submitted electronically on or before January 1, 2012.   Applications and questions should be sent to J. Jack Lee at jjlee@mdanderson.org.

The 2012 Awards Committee is composed of the 2012 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. 

For the 2012 competition, the finalists of Byar Awards will be announced one week prior to the JSM abstract deadline on Feburary 1, 2012.  Finalists should contact the Section JSM Program Chair, Timothy D. Johnson (tdjtdj@umich.edu) and submit a Topic Contributed abstract to the JSM. 

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).