WNAR of IBS News

Please consider donating to the WNAR Expanding Opportunities Workshop

Jessica Minnier — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 18:00:44 GMT

The 2026 WNAR Expanding Opportunities Workshop (June 13-June 14, 2026) is a satellite workshop held in conjunction with the WNAR Annual Meeting, emphasizing the importance of mentorship and belonging in quantitative fields. The 2026 workshop will provide a fun college experience to local native high school students, while creating opportunities for mentorship from peers, statistical researchers, and other members of the scientific community.

You can donate when registering for WNAR 2026 or via the donation page: http://wnar.org/donate

2026 Election Results

Jessica Minnier — Sat, 22 Nov 2025 00:20:57 GMT

Thank you to everyone who participated in the WNAR election for 2026 positions.

Congratulations to WNAR President-Elect Gang Li, Representatives-at-Large Mary Sammel and Brian David Williamson, Program Coordinator Mi-Ok Kim, and Treasurer Brandie Wagner.

Special thanks go to outgoing WNAR Past-President Megan Othus, outgoing Representatives-at-Large Natalie Gasca and Yu-Ru Su, outgoing Regional Advisory Board members Carsten Goerg, Mary Sammel, Lisa Kanary, and Ted Lystig, and outgoing IBS Council Representatives Miguel Marino and Lang Wu. We are grateful for their efforts and dedication to WNAR.

2025 Student Award Winners

Jessica Minnier — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 17:29:47 GMT

Congratulations to Mikaela Nishida for a 2025 WNAR Indigenous Student Travel Award! Mikaela Nishida is a Ph.D. student of Statistics at the University of California Irvine, and she is Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian).

Congratulations to the 28 students who participated in the 2025 WNAR Student Award Competition, and to our winners of the written paper and oral presentations:

WINNER OUTSTANDING WRITTEN PAPER AWARD

Angela Dahl, University of Washington, “A Bayesian Joint Longitudinal-Survival Model in Calendar Time for Epidemic Settings”

WINNER OUTSTANDING ORAL PRESENTATION AWARD

Christian Bernal Zelaya, University of California, Irvine, "Forecasting healthcare utilization using wastewater surveillance data."

RUNNER-UPS PAPER AWARD

Mikaela Nishida, University of California, Irvine, "Modified Nested Case-Control Designs for Assessing Effect Modification in Underrepresented Subpopulations"

Jessalyn Sebastian, University of California, Irvine, "Gaussian Process Priors with Markov Properties for Effective Reproduction Number Estimation"

Sungtaek Son, University of Washington, "Dimension reduction and covariate balancing for learning individualized treatment regimes"

RUNNER-UPS ORAL PRESENTATION AWARD

Shibai Zhang, University of Victoria, "A Conditionally Markovian Reformulation of Memory-Mediated Animal Movement Using Cognitive Maps"

Adam Birnbaum, University of California, Irvine, "Decomposing Interaction-Effect Estimands in Generalized Linear Models for Isolating True Effect Modification"

Kayla Irish, University of Washington, "Simple Covariate Adjustment Using Stable Balancing Weights"

The students were honored at the banquet at the 2025 WNAR Annual Meeting in Whistler, British Columbia. All WNAR participants received travel awards, and winners received additional monetary awards and certificates. We give special thanks to the chair of the student paper competition, Brian D Williamson (Kaiser Permanente) and the judges on the committee who read papers and observed oral presentations.

Please encourage your students to participate in the competition in 2026! Abstracts and papers will be due in the late winter 2026. More information can be found on the Student Paper Award website.

2025 IBS/WNAR Outstanding Impact Award and Lectureship Recipient Announced

Jessica Minnier — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 17:27:07 GMT

On behalf of WNAR and the WNAR Award Committee, we would like to congratulate Debashis Ghosh as the recipient of the 2025 WNAR Outstanding Impact Award and Lectureship. Congratulations, Dr. Ghosh!

The WNAR of the IBS Outstanding Impact Award and Lectureship was established in 2021 to recognize an individual or a team, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality or citizenship, who has made a significant impact on our society through service and/or research in development and application of statistical, mathematical, and data science theory and methods in the biomedical and environmental sciences. For example, awardees may be individuals or team whose research and/or service in biometrics has made a direct impact on serving underrepresented communities, promoting social justice, addressing environmental issues, or transforming scientific practice, and can comprise either a single contribution of extraordinary merit or an outstanding aggregate of contributions.

Dr. Debashis Ghosh is is Professor of the Department of Biostatistics and Informatics at the Colorado School of Public Health. Dr. Ghosh's nomination package clearly demonstrated his highly impactful research contributions to the fields of biometrics and science at large. He is specifically recognized for his statistical innovation and excellence in the areas of recurrent event analysis and genomics, for rigorous evaluation of kernal machines used in machine learning, and his contributions to the development of the popular cancer genomics database,

ONCOMINE. WNAR is very proud of its outstanding members, represented by Dr. Ghosh.

Congratulations as well to our other nominees, all of whom were outstanding and highly impressive in their contributions.

As a recipient of the award, Dr. Ghosh will give a talk in the WNAR Outstanding Impact Award Lecture at the JSM on Thursday, August 7, 2025, 10:30am. More information about the lecture can be found below.

WNAR members, please plan to submit nomination materials for next year’s award in Fall 2025. We look forward to recognizing our outstanding members with this honor. More information about the award process and upcoming deadlines can be found on the WNAR award website.

WNAR Outstanding Impact Award Lecture at the JSM

Session 1414 Thursday, August 7, 2025, 10:30AM-12:20PM

Music City Center; Room: CC-104B

Title: Distances and Sufficiency in the Age of AI

Speaker: Dr. Debashis Ghosh (University of Colorado, School of Public Health)

Abstract: With the advent of big data and large-scale computational technologies, increasing focus has been paid to the development of methodology in statistics, machine learning and data science. In particular, the talk these days focuses on models such as deep learning and generative AI. I will discuss two very basic concepts in statistics, distance and sufficiency, and describe our past work in this area as well as use them as guiding principles for how to study and think critically about current AI tools.

More information about the award and past awardees can be found on the award's website.

2025 Election Results

Jessica Minnier — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 18:30:29 GMT

Thank you to everyone who participated in the WNAR election for 2025 positions.

Congratulations to WNAR President-Elect Nairanjana (Jan) Dasgupta, Representatives-at-Large Kayleigh Keller and Katie Wilson, and Secretary Jessica Minnier.

Special thanks go to outgoing WNAR Past-President Elizabeth Juarez-Colunga, outgoing Representatives-at-Large Ting Ye and Yiliang Zhu, and Regional Advisory Board members Neby Bekele, Chiung-Yu Huang, and Jennifer Nelson. We are grateful for their efforts and dedication to WNAR.

2024 Student Award Winners

Jessica Minnier — Thu, 11 Jul 2024 22:35:24 GMT

Congratulations to the 42 students who participated in the 2024 WNAR Student Award Competition, and to our winners of the written paper and oral presentations:

WINNERS PAPER AWARD

Leah Andrews, University of Washington, “Semiparametric Methods for Evaluating COVID-19 Vaccine Regimens in Test-Negative Designs”

Navneet Hakhu, University of California Irvine, “Censoring-Robust Estimation in Time-to-Event Clinical Trials with Adaptive Randomization”

Robin Liu, University of California Santa Barbara, “Natural Covariate-adjusted Gaussian Graphical Regression”

WINNER PRESENTATION AWARD

Evan Sidrow, University of British Columbia, “Stochastic Optimization for Efficient Inference in Ecological Hidden Markov Models”

The students were honored at the banquet at the 2024 WNAR Annual Meeting in Fort Collins, Colorado. All WNAR participants received travel awards, and winners received additional monetary awards and certificates. We give special thanks to the chair of the student paper competition, Kayleigh Keller, Colorado State University, and the judges on the committee who read papers and observed oral presentations:

Alejandra Benitez, Genentech

Shizhe Chen, University of California Davis

Juna Goo, Boise State University

Yawen Guan, Colorado State University

Ning Hao, University of Arizona

Yuan Jiang, Oregon State University

Alex Kaizer, Colorado School of Public Health

Matt Koslovsky, Colorado State University

Esra Kurum, University of California Riverside

Yiwen Liu, University of Arizona

Camille Moore, National Jewish Hospital

Tianyu Pan, Stanford University

Matteo Sesia, University of Southern California

Nicky Wakim, Oregon Health and Science University

Tianying Wang, Colorado State Univeristy

Yue Wang, Colorado School of Public Health

Brian Williamson, Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute

Shangyuan Ye, Oregon Health and Science University

Fan Xia, University of California San Francisco

Please encourage your students to participate in the competition in 2025! Abstracts and papers will be due in the late winter. More information can be found on the Student Paper Award website.

2024 WNAR Outstanding Impact Award and Lectureship Recipient Announced

Jessica Minnier — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 21:55:07 GMT

On behalf of WNAR and the WNAR Award Committee, we would like to congratulate Robert Tibshirani as the recipient of the 2024 WNAR Outstanding Impact Award and Lectureship. Congratulations, Dr. Tibshirani!

The WNAR of IBS Outstanding impact and Lectureship Award was established in 2021 to recognize an outstanding individual or team, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality or citizenship, who has made a significant impact on our society through service and/or research in the development and application of statistical, mathematical, and data science theory and methods in the biomedical or environmental sciences. A significant impact can comprise either a single contribution of extraordinary merit or an outstanding aggregate of contributions that significantly impacts to biosciences and environmental sciences.

Dr. Robert J. Tibshirani is Professor of Biomedical Data Science and Statistics at Stanford University. Dr. Tibshirani’s nomination package clearly demonstrated his highly impactful research contributions to the fields of biometrics and science at large. The LASSO, his most renowned contribution, has ignited an entirely new realm of research and applications from genomics to finance, and is a cornerstone of the modern data science. WNAR is very proud of its outstanding members, represented by Dr. Tibshirani.

Congratulations as well to our other nominees, all of whom were outstanding and highly impressive in their contributions.

As a recipient of the award, Dr. Tibshirani will give a talk in the WNAR Outstanding Impact Award Lecture at the JSM on Monday, August 5, 2024, 2pm. More information about the lecture can be found below.

WNAR members, please plan to submit nomination materials for next year’s award in Fall 2024. We look forward to recognizing our outstanding members with this honor. More information about the award process and upcoming deadlines can be found on the WNAR award website.

WNAR Outstanding Impact Award Lecture at the JSM

Session 1403 Monday August 5, 2:00-3:50PM
Title: Cooperative learning and cooperative components analysis

Speaker: Dr. Robert Tibshirani (Stanford Biomedical Science and Statistics)

Abstract: We propose two methods --- one for supervised learning and the other for unsupervised learning-- both of which make use of an “agreement penalty”.

The first—“Cooperative learning”--- is designed for labelled data with multiple sets of features (“views”). The multiview problem is especially important in biology and medicine, where “-omics” data, such as genomics, proteomics, and radiomics, are measured on a common set of samples. Cooperative learning combines the usual squared-error loss of predictions with an “agreement” penalty to encourage the predictions from different data views to agree. By varying the weight of the agreement penalty, we get a continuum of solutions that include the well-known early and late fusion approaches.

Cooperative components analysis (“CoCA”) is a new method for unsupervised multi-view analysis. It identifies the component that simultaneously captures significant within-view variance and exhibits strong cross-view correlation. The challenge of integrating multi-view data is particularly important in biology and medicine, where various types of “-omic” data, ranging from genomics to proteomics, are collected from the same set of samples.
CoCA combines a reconstruction error loss to preserve information within data views and an “agreement penalty” to encourage alignment across views. By balancing the trade-off between these two key components in the objective, CoCA encompasses both principal component analysis and canonical correlation analysis as special cases.

This is joint work with DY Ding, S Li, B Narasimhan, Alden Green and Min Sun.

2024 WNAR Presidential and Keynote Addresses

Jessica Minnier — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 17:18:04 GMT

We look forward to welcoming WNAR 2024 attendees to the joint WNAR/Graybill conference in Fort Collins starting this Sunday, June 9! We would like to highlight two special talks:

Robert L. Santos, Director of the U.S. Census Bureau, will be giving the WNAR Plenary and Presidential Address "Serving Through Leadership: My Approach to Heading a Federal Statistical Agency" on Monday June 10 at 8:45am.
Scott Evans, Professor, George Washington University, will be giving the Graybill Keynote "The order of operations is important: It is time to correct the clinical trial arithmetic" on Tuesday June 11, at 8:30am

Abstracts:

Robert L. Santos, Director of the U.S. Census Bureau

Serving Through Leadership: My Approach to Heading a Federal Statistical Agency

This talk will present my approach to leading the largest federal statistical agency in the United States, and how I came to be the leader that I am. By telling my personal and professional story, I'll show how becoming a leader can be much more than learning the art of decision making or learning techniques to herd cats. Based on my personal experience, I believe that virtually every person can grow into a competent, sage leader. Your leadership journey transcends whether you are an introvert or extrovert, whether you are a mathematical statistician, a data scientist or an applied statistician or anything else. Everything about you affects who you are as a leader, and to be effective, you need to bring your "whole self" to the table -- not just your education and technical expertise, but your life experience, culture, values and aspirations. Becoming a leader is necessarily a never-ending growth process, one that has to come from within you.

Dr. Scott Evans, Professor and Founding Chair of the Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics and the Director of The Biostatistics Center at Milken Institute School of Public Health of the George Washington University.

The order of operations is important: It is time to correct the clinical trial arithmetic

Typically in clinical trials efficacy and safety are evaluated in silos, one outcome at a time. However this approach: fails to incorporate associations between or the cumulative nature of multiple outcomes in individual patients, suffers from competing risk complexities during interpretation of individual outcomes, fails to recognize important gradations of patient responses, suboptimally evaluates treatment effect heterogeneity based on a single endpoint rather than benefit:risk considerations, and since efficacy and safety analyses are often conducted on different populations, generalizability is unclear. In recognition of this, the Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) recently recommended: (1) transitioning benefit-risk evaluation as a post-hoc exercise to incorporating benefit-risk considerations into clinical trial design, and (2) a pragmatic patient-centric approach to benefit-risk assessment to ensure proper evaluation of the benefits and harms as experienced by patients. The desirability of outcome ranking (DOOR) is a paradigm for the design, analysis, and interpretation of clinical trials based on a comprehensive patient-centric benefit-risk evaluation developed to address these limitations and the CIOMS recommendations, and advance clinical trial science. In this paradigm outcomes are used to analyze patients rather than patients being used to analyze outcomes. The experiences of trial participants in different treatment arms are compared by the desirability of the overall patient outcome, increasing pragmatism and addressing the most important “real world” question to aid clinical decision-making: how do resulting patient experiences, when comprehensively considering benefits and harms, compare between therapeutic alternatives? The DOOR paradigm, and freely available online tools for design and robust analyses are discussed, and illustrated using examples.

2024 WNAR Indigenous Student Travel Awardee

Jessica Minnier — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 21:49:01 GMT

Congratulations to Kyle Conniff who is our first awardee of the WNAR Indigenous Student Travel Award! Kyle Conniff is a Ph.D. candidate of Statistics at the University of California Irvine, and he is a member of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin.

WNAR offers multiple travel awards for Indigenous students from within the WNAR region to attend our annual conference. Awards up to $1,000 are available for conference travel and lodging related expenses. Eligible students include Indigenous peoples of North America and the Pacific Islands. To apply for the 2025 meeting, please send a letter outlining your connection to Indigenous peoples and why you are looking forward to attending the WNAR annual conference to: wnar@wnar.org.

2024 Election Results

Megan Othus — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 22:09:54 GMT

Thank you to everyone who participated in the WNAR election for 2024 positions.

Congratulations to WNAR President-Elect David Rocke, Program Coordinator Wen Zhou, and Representatives-at-Large Lindsay Renfro and Marie Auger-Methe.

Special thanks go out to outgoing WNAR Past-President Gary Chan, Program Coordinator Lingling An, and outgoing Representatives-at-Large Charlotte Gard and Julia Palacios for their efforts and dedication to WNAR.

2023 Student Award Winners

Jessica Minnier — Fri, 14 Jul 2023 21:51:54 GMT

Congratulations to the 25 students who participated in the 2023 WNAR Student Award Competition, and to our winners of the written paper and oral presentations:

WINNER PAPER AWARD

Soumik Purkayastha, University of Michigan, Asymmetric Predictability: an information theoretic approach to causal inference

RUNNER UP PAPER AWARD

Norihiro Suzuki, Tokyo Medical University, A New Criterion for Determining a Cutoff Value Based on the Biases of the Incidence Proportions in the Presence of Outcome Misclassifications

WINNER PRESENTATION AWARD

Michael Christensen, Duke University, A Dynamic Model Characterizing Bird Migration

RUNNERS UP PRESENTATION AWARD

Elizabeth Wynn, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Simulating Longitudinal Single-cell RNA Sequencing Data

Seth Temple, University of Washington, Robust statistical inference for very recent and strong incomplete selective sweeps

Soumik Purkayastha, University of Michigan, Asymmetric Predictability: an information theoretic approach to causal inference

The students were honored at the banquet at the 2023 WNAR Annual Meeting in Anchorage, Alaska. All WNAR participants received travel awards, and winners received additional monetary awards and certificates. We give special thanks to the chair of the student paper competition, Charlotte Gard of New Mexico State University, and the judges on the committee who read papers and observed oral presentations: Fang Chen (SAS); Shuai Chen (University of California, Davis); Chad He (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center); Alexander Kaizer (Colorado School of Public Health); Eric Kawaguchi (University of Southern California); Kayleigh Keller (Colorado State University); Jane Lange (Oregon Health & Science University); Hong Li (University of California, Davis); Yu-Ru Su (Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute); Brandie Wagner (Colorado School of Public Health); Brian Williamson (Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute); Katie Wilson (University of Washington); Shangyuan Ye (Oregon Health & Science University); Guo Yu (University of California, Santa Barbara); Qian Zhao (Stanford University).

Please encourage your students to participate in the competition in 2024! Abstracts and papers will be due in the late winter. More information can be found on the Student Paper Award website.

2023 WNAR Outstanding Impact Award and Lectureship Recipient Announced

Jessica Minnier — Mon, 19 Jun 2023 23:04:53 GMT

On behalf of WNAR and the WNAR Award Committee, we would like to congratulate Steve Horvath as the recipient of the 2023 WNAR Outstanding Impact Award and Lectureship. Congratulations, Dr. Horvath!

Dr. Steve Horvath is a Principal Investigator at the Altos Labs San Diego Institute of Science. Prior to joining Altos, he was a Professor of Human Genetics and Biostatistics at UCLA. Dr. Horvath’s nomination package clearly demonstrated his highly impactful research contributions to the fields of bioinformatics and aging biology, especially for his development of the widely used weighted correlation network analysis (WGCNA) method for studying biological networks and for his revolutionary development of the highly accurate and widely used epigenetic clocks, also known as Horvath’s clocks, for age estimation based on DNA methylation data. WNAR is very proud of its outstanding members, represented by Dr. Horvath.

Congratulations as well to our other nominees, all of whom were outstanding and highly impressive in their contributions.

As a recipient of the award, Dr. Horvath will give a talk in the WNAR Outstanding Impact Award Lecture at the JSM on Tuesday, August 8, 2023, 2pm. More information about the lecture can be found below.

WNAR members, please plan to submit nomination materials for next year’s award. We look forward to recognizing our outstanding members with this honor. More information about the award process can be found on the WNAR award website.

WNAR Outstanding Impact Award Lecture at the JSM

Session 1287 August 8, 2:00-3:50PM
Title: Epigenetic Clocks and Weighted Correlation Network Analysis

Speaker: Steve Horvath (Department of Biostatistics, University of California, Los Angeles; Altos Labs)

Abstract: In this presentation, I will discuss two prevalent techniques employed in biostatistics and bioinformatics. First, I will provide an overview of weighted correlation network analysis (WGCNA), a systems biology approach used to delineate correlation patterns among variables. WGCNA enables the identification of clusters (modules) of highly correlated genes, the summarization of these clusters via module eigengene or intramodular hub gene, the establishment of relationships between modules and external sample traits (utilizing eigengene network methodology), and the computation of module membership measures. These techniques have proven successful across various biological contexts. Specifically, I will discuss a recent application of WGCNA to cytosine methylation data gathered by the Mammalian Methylation Consortium.

The second method discussed is referred to as epigenetic clocks, which serve as genomic aging indicators based on cytosine methylation patterns. I will outline three successive generations of epigenetic clocks that are designed to predict age in humans, assess human mortality risk, and estimate age across various mammalian species, respectively.

Dr. Horvath and WNAR President Elizabeth Juarez-Colunga at the JSM session, August 2023

WNAR 2023 Election Results

Jessica Minnier — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 22:49:59 GMT

Thank you to everyone who participated in the WNAR election for 2023 positions.

Congratulations to WNAR President-Elect Megan Othus, Treasurer Brandie Wagner, and Regional Committee Representatives Natalie Gasca and Yu-Ru Su.

Special thanks go out to outgoing WNAR Past-President Laura Cowen and outgoing Regional Committee Representatives Lisa Brown and Karen Messer for their efforts and dedication to WNAR.

All current officers and positions are listed on the WNAR Leadership page.

WNAR 2023 and 2024 Meeting Dates and Locations

Jessica Minnier — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 16:01:30 GMT

Save the date for future WNAR meetings. More information will be added to the Meetings page.

June 18-21, 2023, Anchorage, Alaska
- Scientific program chair: Audrey Hendricks, University of Colorado Denver
- Local organizer: Jiaqi Huang, Alaska Department of Fish and Game
- Chair of Student Award Committee: Charlotte Gard, New Mexico State University
June 9-12, 2024, Fort Collins, Colorado, joint with the Graybill Conference
- Local organizer: Rick Zhou, Colorado State University

2022 Student Award Competition Winners

Jessica Minnier — Fri, 17 Jun 2022 16:41:14 GMT

Forty-two students participated in the student paper competition at the 2022 WNAR/IMS conference (virtually).

There were two winners (tied) in the written category: Anna Neufeld, University of Washington ("Inference after latent variable estimation for single-cell RNA sequencing data") and Shuting Shen, Harvard University ("Fast distributed Principal Component Analysis for large scale federated data").

There were also two winners (tied) in the oral category: Larry Han, Harvard University ("Privacy-preserving and communication-efficient causal inference for hospital quality measurement") and Tianyu Zhang, University of Washington, ("Regression in Tensor Product Spaces by the Method of Sieves").

The students were honored at special zoom event and awardees will receive certificates and monetary awards. We give a special thanks to the chair of the student paper competition, Fan Yang, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, and the rest of the committee: Jarrett Barber, Fei Gao, Kayleigh Keller, Lihua Lei, John Rice, Subodh Selukar, Krithika Suresh, Katherine Wilson, Fan Xia, Fuyong Xing, Fan Yang, Ting Ye, Ying Zhou.

Congratulations to all!

Inaugural WNAR Outstanding Impact Award and Lectureship Recipient Announced

Jessica Minnier — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 19:04:10 GMT

On behalf of WNAR and the WNAR Award Committee, we would like to congratulate Dr. Bin Yu of UC Berkeley, the recipient of the inaugural WNAR Outstanding Impact Award and Lectureship. Congratulations, Dr. Yu!

Dr. Bin Yu is the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor and Class of 1936 Second Chair in the Departments of Statistics and Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley. Dr Yu’s nomination package clearly demonstrated her fundamental contributions in both statistical theory and practice, which has lasting impacts across the fields of statistics and interdisciplinary domains; her high visible role model, especially for women researchers in multiple disciplines; and her outstanding leadership in professional and community services that positively influenced advancement in and recognition of Biometrics. WNAR is very proud of its outstanding members, represented by Dr. Yu.

Congratulations as well to our other nominees, all of whom were outstanding and highly impressive in their contributions.

As a recipient of the award, Dr. Yu will give a talk in the WNAR Outstanding Impact Award Lecture at the JSM on Monday, August 8, 2022, 10:30. More information about the lecture can be found below.

WNAR Outstanding Impact Award Lecture at the JSM

Session 121, Monday Aug 8, 10:30am-12:20pm
Title: Principles for Impactful Data Science and Statistics: Lessons Learned from Covid-19 Forecasting and Beyond

Speaker: Bin Yu (University of California, Berkeley)
Panel on impactful research with panelists
Amy Braverman (JPL), Ying Lu (Stanford), Marc Suchard (UCLA), Katerina Kechris (Univ of Colorado, Denver), Bin Yu (UC Berkeley), and Hongyu Zhao (Yale)

Abstract:

Impactful data science or statistical research outside statistics is a professional responsibility of statistics as a field and a necessity for its prosperity and funding. In this talk, we distill principles out of the Yu Group’s experience in Spring 2020, when a 12-person rapid-response team used skills of data science/statistics and beyond to help distribute Covid PPE. These principles are useful in general to ensure that our data science and statistics work be impactful in domain fields and society at large.

A data science process towards impact includes tapping into domain knowledge (about epidemiology and medical logistics chains in the covid forecasting project), collecting or curating a relevant data repository, developing models relevant for solving the domain problem (for short-term county-level death forecasting in the US in the covid project), and building an accessible platform for sharing visualization (AI machine website in the covid project). Finally, we emphasize dealing with problems that require rapid response, often resembling agile software development.

WNAR election results

Megan Othus — Sat, 18 Dec 2021 01:45:10 GMT

Thank you to everyone who participated in the WNAR election.

Congratulations to WNAR President-Elect Elizabeth Juarez-Colunga, Program Coordinator Lingling An, and Regional Committee Representatives Ting Ye and Yiliang Zhu.

Special thanks go out to outgoing WNAR Past-President Ying Lu and outgoing Regional Committee Representative Katie Kerr for their efforts and dedication to WNAR.

Thank you to outgoing Secretary/Correspondent Megan Othus for her decade of extraordinary service to WNAR.

New IBS/WNAR Impact Award and Lectureship

Jessica Minnier — Mon, 01 Nov 2021 18:03:59 GMT

WNAR has initiated an IBS/WNAR Impact Award and Lectureship for outstanding individuals or teams from the WNAR Region. The inaugural call for nominations is now open, with a submission deadline of January 15, 2022.

Details can be found in the attached Call for Nominations and also within the WNAR Awards section of the website.

The Lectureship will occur at JSM in August 2022.

A Joint Statement Condemning Anti-Asian Racism from the COPSS Societies: ASA, ENAR, IMS, SSC and WNAR

Megan Othus — Wed, 28 Apr 2021 20:27:34 GMT

The Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS) condemns in the strongest possible terms all forms of racism and hate. The recent, horrendous event in Atlanta that targeted Asians and Americans of Asian ancestry in the United States is but one more manifestation of the systemic racism and exclusion that many of our colleagues and neighbors suffer routinely.

The FBI reports that hate crimes in the United States are at their highest point in over a decade; similar statistics have been reported in Canada. Hate crimes are motivated by biases towards a person’s race, religion, sexual preference and other categories. Critically for us as statisticians, violence against targeted groups occurs when we fail to make our profession — and all of society — more diverse and inclusive. Through our skills in quantitative reasoning, we are best equipped to generate evidence on impacts of inherent biases on targeted groups so that informed actions are taken to prevent hate crimes.

While Asian, Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) are not alone in terms of how frequently they are subjected to hate and prejudice, 2020 saw a sharp increase — as high as 150% relative to earlier years — in the number of crimes reported by AAPI persons. This is intolerable. COPSS, on behalf of its partner societies and all their members, stands firmly in support of all Asian, Asian Canadian, and Asian-American statisticians.

As a profession, we have benefited from the many and important contributions of our AAPI colleagues. There is no question that the influx of talent from other nations, but particularly from Asian countries, has enabled the United States and Canada to sustain its leadership role in science, technology, and innovation. Science and technology are the engine that drives economic development and opens more opportunities for advancement in society.

COPSS states in no uncertain terms that hate, prejudice, and exclusion have no place in any of its partner societies and will not be tolerated. We all need to do our part to build a more just society. COPSS has established a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Taskforce to develop strategies and activities to ensure that our profession is welcoming to all, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion and any other personal attributes. Furthermore, COPSS will continue to reflect on its own role in the perpetuation of any implicit biases against any member of our professional community by examining the fair representation of all deserving statisticians (including members of Asian and Pacific Islander descent) among recipients of COPSS awards, identifying any systematic underrepresentation or historical exclusion, and implementing more equitable solutions.

We all need to do more to promote justice, fairness, and respect. Let us commit to doing everything we can to ensure that those values guide our profession. Please join COPSS in expressing its deepest appreciation to all its members in these difficult times and in expressing its solidarity with the entire Asian community, and especially our cherished members of Asian descent and their loved ones.

*This statement was approved by leadership of all five COPSS societies.
—
American Statistical Association (ASA)
Eastern North American Region of the International Biometric Society (ENAR)
Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS)
Statistical Society of Canada/Société statistique du Canada (SSC)
Western North American Region of the International Biometric Society (WNAR)

2021 WNAR election results

Megan Othus — Fri, 18 Dec 2020 17:54:33 GMT

Congratulations to WNAR President-Elect Gary Chan from University of Washington, Secretary-elect Jessica Minnier from Oregon Health Sciences University, Program, Coordinator Elizabeth Juarez-Colunga from University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, and Regional Committee Representatives Charlotte Gard from New Mexico State University and Julia Palacios from Standard University.

Special thanks go out to outgoing WNAR Past-President Katerina Kechris, outgoing Program Coordinator Dongseok Choi, and outgoing Regional Committee Representatives Ed Bedrick, Roy Mendelssohn, and Cristina Murray-Krezen for their efforts and dedication to WNAR.

In addition, the WNAR By-Laws proposed amendments were approved.

We would like to thank all the WNAR members who volunteered to be candidates for these offices. WNAR is fortunate to have so many talented members willing to dedicate their time and energy to WNAR, which makes each election a choice among outstanding individuals.

WNAR 2020 Business meeting

Megan Othus — Sat, 05 Dec 2020 22:12:44 GMT

The first virtual WNAR Business Meeting was held successfully on December 5, 2020. The slide deck and Zoom screenshot can be found here.

Tomi Mori receives Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Development of the IBS

Megan Othus — Tue, 11 Aug 2020 14:17:53 GMT

Congratulations to Professor Tomi Mori, President of WNAR in 2018, who has received the prestigious Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Development of the IBS.

Professor Mori is the Chair and Member of the Department of Biostatistics at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Prior to January 2020, she was the Walter & Clara Brownfield Professor of Cancer Biostatistics at Oregon Health & Science University and Portland State University School of Public Health.

She has been a member of IBS since 1998 a long record of serving in leadership roles for WNAR and IBS, including serving as WNAR President-Elect, President, and Past-President between 2017-2019.

Among her many accomplishments, she has forged ongoing relationships between WNAR and the IBS Japanese and Argentinian Regions and with the Korean International Statistical Society. Due to her role as the ASA representative to the AAAS Medical Science Section she was a liaison between WNAR and AAAS and was instrumental in helping WNAR become a founding member of the Societies Consortium on Sexual Harassment in STEMM. She has made many contributions to making meetings more accessible and promoting participation in IBS.

Congratulations to Professor Mori!

2020 Student Paper Competition Winners

Megan Othus — Sat, 11 Jul 2020 01:07:06 GMT

Although the 2020 WNAR meeting was cancelled due to COVID-19, WNAR was committed to support student researchers and transitioned to a virtual Student Paper Competition.

Twenty-four students participated in the virtual student paper competition.

The winners in the written category were:
Lingjing Jiang, University of California San Diego: “Assessing Reproducibility of Selected Features with Big Data"
Kwangho Kim, Carnegie Mellon University: “Causal Clustering”
The winner of the oral category was:
Jinyuan Liu, University of California San Diego: “Regression Models for within-subjects Responses with between-subject Explanatory Variables: Applications to Microbiome Data”

The students received their award at a virtual meeting.

We give a special thanks to the chair of the student paper competition, Harold Bae from Oregon State University and the other Student Competition judges: Jay Barber (Northern Arizona University), Fang Chen (SAS), Charlotte Gard (New Mexico State University), Tusharkanti Ghosh (University of Colorado), Jessica Minnier (Oregon Health & Sciences University), Camille Moore (National Jewish Hospital), Debmalya Nandy (University of Colorado), and Laura Saba (University of Colorado). Summary (and photo) here.

Upcoming NISS events for junior researchers

Megan Othus — Tue, 31 Mar 2020 14:46:30 GMT

NISS has several upcoming events for junior researchers: a virtual academic career fair on April 23rd (link) and the NISS Writing Workshop to be held at the Joint Statistical Meetings in August (link).

WNAR is proud to be a participating society in NISS and sponsor of the Writing Workshop and encourages eligible WNAR members to apply and register for both events.

2020 Election results

Megan Othus — Fri, 20 Dec 2019 17:53:17 GMT

Congratulations to WNAR President-Elect Laura Cowen from University of Victoria, Secretary Megan Othus from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and Regional Committee Representatives Lisa Brown from Seattle Genetics and Karen Messer from University of California San Diego.

Special thanks go out to outgoing WNAR Past-President Tomi Mori and outgoing Regional Committee Representatives Marco Carone and Miguel Marino for their efforts and dedication to WNAR.

2019 Student Paper Competition Winners

Megan Othus — Fri, 05 Jul 2019 21:03:17 GMT

Thirty-eight students participated in the student paper competition at the 2019 WNAR/IMS/JR conference. The winner in the written category was Tiffany Tang, University of California Berkeley (“Integrated Principal Components Analysis “). There were three winners (tied) in the oral category: Natalie Gasca, University of Washington (“Using dimension-reduction methods to identify interpretable diet patterns related to body mass index (BMI) in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA)”), Evan Rosenman, Stanford University (“Propensity Score Methods for Merging Observational and Experimental Datasets”), and Justin Williams, University of California, Los Angeles (“Maximum Likelihood Estimation of a Truncated Normal Distribution with Censored Data”). The students received their award at the conference banquet. We give a special thanks to the chair of the student paper competition, Jessica Minnier from Oregon Health Sciences University.

2019 Election results

Megan Othus — Fri, 21 Dec 2018 21:23:40 GMT

Congratulations to WNAR President-Elect Ying Lu from Stanford University, Treasurer-Elect Brandie Wagner from University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Treasurer Mary Redman from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Program Coordinator Dongseok Choi from Oregon Health Sciences University, and Regional Committee Representative Katie Kerr from University of Washington.

Special thanks go out to outgoing WNAR Past-President Sarah Emerson and outgoing Regional Committee Representative Xioaming Sheng for their efforts and dedication to WNAR.

2018 Student Paper Competition Winners

Megan Othus — Wed, 27 Jun 2018 17:44:27 GMT

Congratulations to the winners of 2018 WNAR student paper competition. The Most Outstanding Written Paper winners (tied) were Anu Mishra from the University of Washington for her paper “Weighted Recalibration for Improved Clinical Utility of Risk Scores” and Katherine Wilson from the University of Washington for her paper “Child Mortality Estimation Incorporating Birth History Data.” The Most Outstanding Oral Presentation winner was Phuong Vu from University of Washington for presentation “Probabilistic Predictive Principal Components Analysis for Spatially Misaligned and High-Dimensional Air Pollution Data with Missing Observations.” The Distinguished Oral Presentation winner was Kelsey Grinde from the University of Washington for her presentation “Controlling for Multiple Testing in Genome-Wide Admixture Mapping Studies. The students received their award at the conference banquet.

We give a special thanks to the chair of the student paper competition, Jessica Minnier from Oregon Health Sciences University. We also thank the team of student paper reviewers and judges for the students’ oral presentations and papers: Harold Bae from Oregon State University, Charlotte Gard from New Mexico State University, Katerina Kechris from University of Colorado Anschultz Medical Campus, Miguel Marino from Oregon Health Science University, and Byung Park from Oregon Health Sciences University.

2016 WNAR Student Paper Competition Winners

Mon, 18 Jul 2016 23:13:17 GMT

Congratulations to all 2016 WNAR Student Paper Competition participants for their excellent submissions: Anna Liza Antonio (University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)), Adam Brand (University of Washington (UW)), Peter DeWitt (University of Colorado Denver), Jonathan Fintzi (UW), Luella Fu (University of Southern California), Joshua Keller (UW), Kai Li (Oregon State University), Qian Li (UCLA), Amit Meir (UW), Aaron Scheffler (UCLA), Arjun Sondhi (UW), Yifei Wang (University of California Davis), Jason Xu (UW), Tingting Yu (University of British Columbia), Qian Zhang (UW).

The runner-ups for the written and oral parts are Joshua Keller and Peter DeWitt respectively.

The winners for the written and oral competitions are Aaron Scheffler and Jonathan Fintzi respectively.

Congratulations!

WNAR Invited Sessions at IBC2016

Catherine Crespi — Fri, 13 May 2016 00:44:14 GMT

WNAR is excited to be sponsoring 12 invited sessions at the 2016 IBS/WNAR conference in Victoria, BC, Canada, July 10-15, 2016. The sessions cover a broad range of topics. Find a list here.

Regular registration available for 2016 IBS/WNAR conference until June 1, 2016.

Mon, 14 Mar 2016 13:22:57 GMT

Regular registration for the 2016 IBS/WNAR conference in beautiful Victoria, BC, Canada is available until June 1, 2016. Prices increase after that! Click here to register.

Further details on WNAR student paper competition now available.

Mon, 14 Mar 2016 13:18:40 GMT

See Student Competition tab for further details regarding the WNAR student paper competition for the 2016 IBS / WNAR conference in Victoria, Canada, July 10-15, 2016.

First International Prize in Statistics is launched!

Catherine Crespi — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 22:40:28 GMT

Nominations are open for the first International Prize in Statistics, to be awarded at the ISI World Statistics Congress in Marrakech in July, 2017.

The purpose of the Prize is to call public attention to the important role that statistics, data analysis, probability, and understanding of uncertainty have played and are playing in the advancement of society, science, technology and human welfare. The Prize was created by five international statistical societies (American Statistical Association, International Biometric Society, International Statistical Institute, Institute of Mathematical Statistics, Royal Statistical Society).

Nominations are open through August 15, 2016. The first International Prize in Statistics recipient will be announced in October, 2016, and will be honored during a special ceremony in Marrakech in 2017. The Prize will carry with it a cash award of at least $75,000.

An international prize recognizing excellence in statistics has been a dream for many people for many decades, and the International Prize in Statistics Foundation is thrilled to be making this long-awaited prize a reality. Please spread the word through your networks, especially via social media. We need to make sure we receive outstanding nominations for the Prize.

Questions may be directed to Susan Ellenberg (sellenbe@upenn.edu) or Ron Wasserstein (ron@amstat.org)

IBC2016 Call for Contributed Papers - Deadline Jan. 24

Catherine Crespi — Mon, 28 Dec 2015 19:24:59 GMT

Submission of abstracts for contributed papers for IBC 2016 is now open until January 24, 2016. More information is available here.

Registration for the 2016 International Biometric Conference is open!

Catherine Crespi — Mon, 28 Dec 2015 19:20:04 GMT

Registration for IBC 2016 is now open! Online registration is available here.

WNAR ELECTION RESULTS

Thu, 03 Dec 2015 15:00:00 GMT

We are please to announce that Sarah Emerson is the new President Elect. Tomi Mori and Xiaoming Sheng were elected as Representatives at Large, and Megan Othus was reelected as Secretary. Thank you to all our candidates!

WNAR of IBS News

Please consider donating to the WNAR Expanding Opportunities Workshop

2026 Election Results

2025 Student Award Winners

2025 IBS/WNAR Outstanding Impact Award and Lectureship Recipient Announced

2025 Election Results

2024 Student Award Winners

2024 WNAR Outstanding Impact Award and Lectureship Recipient Announced

2024 WNAR Presidential and Keynote Addresses

2024 WNAR Indigenous Student Travel Awardee

2024 Election Results

2023 Student Award Winners

2023 WNAR Outstanding Impact Award and Lectureship Recipient Announced

WNAR 2023 Election Results

WNAR 2023 and 2024 Meeting Dates and Locations

June 18-21, 2023, Anchorage, Alaska

June 9-12, 2024, Fort Collins, Colorado, joint with the Graybill Conference

2022 Student Award Competition Winners

Inaugural WNAR Outstanding Impact Award and Lectureship Recipient Announced

WNAR election results

New IBS/WNAR Impact Award and Lectureship

A Joint Statement Condemning Anti-Asian Racism from the COPSS Societies: ASA, ENAR, IMS, SSC and WNAR

2021 WNAR election results

WNAR 2020 Business meeting

Tomi Mori receives Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Development of the IBS

2020 Student Paper Competition Winners

Upcoming NISS events for junior researchers

2020 Election results

2019 Student Paper Competition Winners

2019 Election results

2018 Student Paper Competition Winners

2016 WNAR Student Paper Competition Winners

WNAR Invited Sessions at IBC2016

Regular registration available for 2016 IBS/WNAR conference until June 1, 2016.

Further details on WNAR student paper competition now available.

First International Prize in Statistics is launched!

IBC2016 Call for Contributed Papers - Deadline Jan. 24

Registration for the 2016 International Biometric Conference is open!

WNAR ELECTION RESULTS