2011 WNAR/IMS Conference at Cal Poly

By Professor Jimmy Doi

Cal Poly hosted the 2011 WNAR/IMS conference on campus June 19 -22, bringing a host of professionals to campus for a series of workshops. WNAR stands for the Western North American Region of the International Biometric Society (the organization that publishes the journal "Biometrics"). IMS stands for the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (the organization that publishes "Annals of Statistics," among other journals). Professors Jimmy Doi, Melody Pietsch, and Soma Roy organized the conference.

Also available are the complete 2011 WNAR Scientific Schedule and Program Abstracts (PDF).

From the schedule you'll see that there was an impressive array of well-known statisticians included in the program. Researchers from nearby campuses (including Stanford, UC Berkeley and UC Davis) attended. But researchers from other parts of the nation also attended. Some came from the Harvard School of Public Health, The Ohio State University, Johns Hopkins, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research, and the Centers for Disease Control. Surprisingly, several researchers from overseas joined us as well: The University of Auckland, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and National University of Singapore.

Although the WNAR/IMS conference traditionally focuses on research topics in biostatistics, there are many sessions that appeal to a broad audience. The following is a comprehensive list of session titles:

• The Analysis of Complex Data: Nonparametric, Correlated and High Dimensional
• Recent Advances in Adaptive Methods for Clinical Trials
• Survival and Longitudinal Data
• State of the Art Methodology in Causal Analysis
• New Paradigms in Dose-Finding Clinical Trials
• Bayesian Methods
• Using Statistical Modeling and Decision Analysis to Inform Health Policy Making
• High Dimensional Modeling
• Statistical Genetics
• Ethics: White, Black, Gray or Colorful
• Survival Analysis and Longitudinal Models
• Applied and Computational Data Analysis
• Effects of Misspecification in Correlated Data Models
• Advances in Statistical Genetics: in Honor of Professor David Siegmund
• High Dimensional Data
• Models and Designs
• New Developments in R for Displaying Data on the Web
• Advances in Bayesian Computation
• Statistical Methods for High-Throughput Genomic Assays
• Inference Following Selection Procedures and Sequential Stopping Rules
• Inference for Signals and Images
• Recent Advances in Causal Inference
• Bayesian Methods and Data Analysis

Some meeting highlights included the following:

• Social Mixer and Registration (Sunday, June 19)
• Short Course (Sunday, June 19) "Evaluation of Sequential and Adaptive Clinical Trial Designs" by Scott S. Emerson, M.D. Ph.D., Professor of Biostatistics, University of  Washington

• Presidential Invited Speaker (Monday, June 20) , "AIDS: Statistical Science and Public Health" by Ron Brookmeyer, Ph.D., Professor of Biostatistics, UCLA
• New Investigator's Luncheon (Tuesday, June 21) , "Advice Gladly Given but Safety Requires Avoiding Unnecessary Conversation: Guidance to Success in Academics" by Charles McCulloch, Ph.D., Professor and Head, Division of Biostatistics, UC San Francisco

• WNAR Banquet (Tuesday, June 21)

Several Statistics faculty participated in the conference, and 12 of our students served as volunteers for the event. It was a unique learning experience for students and one of their first exposures to a professional statistical conference.