BIOMETRICS SECTION NEWSLETTER, October 2016 Edited by Sheng Luo, Biometrics Section Publications Officer Recap of the 2016 JSM The Biometrics Section held its annual Business Committee Meeting at the 2016 JSM in Chicago, IL. Complete minutes of the meeting will soon be made available on the Section website (http://www.bio.ri.ccf.org/biometrics). Section Chair Debashis Ghosh called the meeting to order, welcomed members and guests, and introduced the members of the Executive Committee. He thanked the 2016 ENAR Program Chair (Mary Sammel), the 2016 JSM Program Chair (Dipankar Bandyopadhyay), and the 2016 CE Chair (Andrea Troxel and Rosemarie Mick) for their outstanding service. Election results: Rebecca Hubbard was elected section chair for 2018. Pamela Shaw was elected representative to the Council of Statistics for 2017-2019. Additional appointments: Sherri Rose was appointed as the Secretary/Treasurer for 2016-2017. JSM 2016 Program Chair Dipankar Bandyopadhyay: This year the Biometrics section was the primary sponsor for 6 invited sessions (4 allocated and 2 competition), 14 topic-contributed sessions, and 27 regular contributed sessions. Two topic-contributed sessions were allocated to the David Byar student paper competition and travel award winners. JSM 2017 Program Chair Barbara Engelhardt is soliciting invited session proposals. Continuing Education 2016/17 (Andrea Troxel and Rosemarie Mick) reported 5 CE session courses for JSM 2016. Rosemarie Mick will be soliciting proposals for JSM 2017; anyone with suggestions please contact her at rmick@upenn.edu Mary Sammel, ENAR 2016 Program Chair, reported that ENAR had a total of 85 invited session proposals with 48 accepted and sponsored by ENAR. IMS sponsored 9 invited sessions at the ENAR this year. Nandita Mitra, ENAR 2017 Program Chair, reported that ENAR program committee was comprised of 15 ASA section representatives (Andrea Foulkes as Associate Program Chair) and 2 ENAR at-large members. There were 75 proposals of which 46 were selected to be included in the invited program. The sessions cover a wide range of topics including data science (big data), precision medicine, genomics, clinical trials, neuroimaging, health policy, and causal inference. The speaker representation is well balanced across Academia, Government and Industry Treasurer, Jonathan Schildcrout As of now, Biometrics Section has $35191.56, and at this time last year, there was $51619.93. Since JSM last year, the section sponsored one postphd training award (Dianna Miglioretti) and two strategic initiatives (Mallorie Fiero, Incorporating quantitatively-talented and underrepresented high school students in Arizona into the biostatistics community ; Pedro A. Torres-Saavedra and Roberto Rivera; Developing the next Generation of
Biostatisticians (in Puerto Rico)). The section paid out $12,000 in student travel awards (40 applicants, 10 travel awards and 1 Byar award). Strategic Initiatives Chair Page Moore Cross-listing the solicitation for strategic initiatives results in far more proposals than only listing in the Biometrics newsletter. Biometrics section membership is still a requirement for receiving a strategic initiative. People have expressed at least some confusion as to what a strategic initiative actually is. We are following up with past recipients who will provide a report on what was accomplished by each strategic initiative. These will be written up in our newsletter and will be posted on our website. It has also been suggested that there should be a link from our site to a distinct strategic initiatives site where people can obtain more information. Byar and Travel Awards: The Byar Award Committee consisted of Diana Miglioretti (Committee Chair, University of California-Davis), Veronica Berrocal (University of Michigan), Debashis Ghosh (University of Colorado-Denver), Amy Herring (University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill), Rebecca Hubbard (University of Pennsylvania), Kyoungmi Kim (University of California-Davis), and Steven Ma (Yale University). Through a comprehensive review process of 40 submissions, the committee chose 10 travel award winners in addition to the Byar Award winner. David P Byar Young Investigator Award Clara Happ, Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, Multivariate Functional Principal Component Analysis for Data Observed on Different (Dimensional) Domains Travel Awards Dandan Xu, University of Florida, Sequential BART for Imputation of Missing Covariates Shanshan Li, Indiana University Fairbanks School of Public Health, Recurrent Event Data Analysis With Intermittently Observed Time-Varying Covariates Lu Mao, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Semiparametric Regression Analysis of Interval-Censored Competing Risks Data Brian Segal, University of Michigan, Fast Approximation of Small p-values in Permutation Tests by Partitioning the Permutation Space Sen Zhao, University of Washington, High-Dimensional Hypothesis Testing With the Lasso Caleb Miles, University of California-Berkeley, A Class of Semiparametric Tests of Treatment Effect Robust to Measurement Error of a Confounder
Teng Zhang, North Carolina State University, Adaptive False Negative Control Under Block- Structured Dependence With Genomic Applications Keegan Korthauer, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, scdd: A statistical approach for identifying differential distributions in single-cell RNA-seq experiments Yuxiang Xie, University of Washington, Sure Screening for Transelliptical Graphical Models Xiangyu Luo, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Nonparametric Bayesian Learning of Heterogeneous Dynamic Transcription Factor Networks Congratulations to the award winners on their notable accomplishments! The Byar award winner received $2,000, and travel award winners each received $1,000. Biometrics Session sponsored Topic Contributed sessions at the JSM, Session #163 on August 1 at 10:30 and Session #418 on August 2 at 2:00. Sen Zhao presented his work as part of Invited Session #630, Brain Connectivity Network Analysis and High-Dimensional Time Series, on August 4 at 8:30 They were honored at the Biometrics Section Business Meeting & Mixer on Monday, August 1 st, from 5:30-7:00PM in Room H-Marquette. APPLICATIONS INVITED FOR 2017 BYAR YOUNG INVESTIGATOR AWARD AND BIOMETRICS SECTION TRAVEL AWARDS Do you know an early-stage investigator who is planning to submit an abstract for the 2017 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM)? If so, you may wish to alert that individual that the ASA Biometrics Section is seeking applications for the 2017 David P. Byar Young Investigator Award. This annual award is given to an early-stage investigator for best paper 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 $2,000 cash award. In addition to the Byar Award, the Section may provide additional travel awards of $1000 each to the authors of other outstanding papers that are submitted to the competition. All 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 December 1, 2016.
Be scheduled to present the same paper submitted for the Award at the 2017 Joint Statistical Meetings in Baltimore, MD as either a talk or poster. Not have submitted the paper to any other ASA section 2017 student or early-stage investigator award competition. Have not been a previous Byar award or Biometrics section travel award winner. 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. Applicants must complete their application by submitting the following materials: A current CV. A one page cover letter that summarizes the paper s content and contribution. One copy of the paper. The paper must be a maximum of 25 double-spaced pages (with max of 25 lines per page) including references but not including tables and figures. Papers that are not within these restrictions will not be considered for an award. All materials must be submitted electronically on or before December 1, 2016. The electronic submission website (to be announced on Section website) will be open by November 1, 2016. Questions should be sent to the 2017 Byar Award Chair, Debashis Ghosh, at debashis.ghosh@ucdenver.edu The 2017 Awards Committee is composed of the 2017 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 2017 competition, the Byar Award and travel award winners will be announced by January 15, 2017. Winners should contact the 2017 Section JSM Program Chair, Barbara Engelhardt (bee@princeton.edu) and submit a Topic Contributed abstract for JSM 2017. 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). 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 this year, with total funding of up to $3,000 - $5,000 per project. The project timelines would be from 1.5-2 years. All investigators are encouraged to apply. Award recipients must be an ASA
member and Biometrics section member before project initiation. A three-page application is due by December 12, 2016, and should be in the following format: Title, Objectives and Specific Aims; Background, Significance, and/or Rationale; Design and Methods; Deliverables/Products, 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 January 1, 2017 and an end date no later than December 31, 2018 also should be specified. Applications should be submitted electronically to the Strategic Initiatives Subcommittee Chair, Page Moore, at Pmoore@uams.edu. All investigators will be expected to submit a brief report at the conclusion of the project to the Subcommittee Chair. Questions should be addressed either to the Subcommittee Chair or to the Subcommittee Co-Chair, Tanya Garcia, at Tpgarcia@sph.tamhsc.edu.