LJ Wei Named Winner of Samuel S. Wilks Award
Lee-Jen Wei, professor in the Department of Biostatistics, has been named the winner of the 2009 Samuel S. Wilks Award, one of the most prestigious awards bestowed by the American Statistical Association (ASA).ASA was founded in 1839 and is the country's leading professional association for statistics and for statisticians.
The Wilks Memorial Award was established in 1964 and recognizes outstanding contributions to statistics. Samuel Wilks was a founding member of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, which now has 4,000 members, and was editor of the Annals of Mathematical Statistics for 11 years.
Shira Mitchell Receives Honorable Mention for Cox Award
Incoming doctoral student Shira Mitchell has been selected as as Honorable Mention recipient for the Gertrude Cox Scholarship. The Cox award is given annually to a promising female graduate student in statistics, and presented at the Joint Statistical Meetings. Congratulations Shira!
2009 Distinguished Alum Award Announced
We are pleased to announce that Dr. John Simes, Professor and Director, NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, The University of Sydney, has been named the recipient of the 2009 Distinguished Alum Award. Dr. Simes will deliver a lecture on May 27, 2009 at Harvard University. The lecture will be held in Kresge G2 at 4:00 PM. All faculty, students and alumni are invited to attend.
Grace Wyshak Promoted to Clinical Professor
The department extends its congratulations and best wishes to Dr. Grace Wyshak, who has just been promoted to Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Wyshak, who holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Biostatistics, is based at the Cambridge Health Alliance, and in the Department of Global Health and Population here at HSPH.
2009 Zelen Leadership Award Announced
The Department is delighted to announce that Dr. David DeMets, Professor and Chair, Department of Biostatistics & Medical Informatics, School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin, has been named as the recipient of the 2009 Marvin Zelen Leadership Award in Statistical Science. Dr. DeMets will speak at the Department of Biostatistics Schering-Plough Workshop on May 29, 2009.
Marvin Zelen receives ACS Award
The Department proudly announces that Professor Marvin Zelen has been selected to receive the American Cancer Society's Medal of Honor for 2009. This is the highest honor bestowed by the ACS and is given annually for outstanding contributions to cancer control in three categories. Dr. Zelen will receive the award for the clinical research category at the ACS's annual meeting in Los Angeles on November 19, 2009. Congratulations Dr. Zelen!
Richard Gelber Honored with Brinker Award
The Department is pleased to announce that Dr. Richard Gelber will be a co-recipient of the 2008 Susan G. Komen for the Cure Brinker Award for Scientific Distinction to be given next week at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Conference. This is a very prestigious award and probably is the most distinguished scientific award given for breast cancer research. Established by the Susan G. Komen for the Cure in 1992, the Brinker Award for Scientific Distinction recognizes leading scientists for significant work in advancing research concepts and for clinical application in the fields of breast cancer research, screening or treatment. The award is presented to basic and clinical researchers who have made seminal advances in the fight against breast cancer. In addition, the award recognizes scholars for a specific contribution, a consistent pattern of contributions, or leadership in the field that has had a substantial impact on the fight against breast cancer.
Doctoral Student Megan Othus Cited for Award
Megan Othus was cited by NCI for a 2008 Health Policy Student Award. The citation reads "Megan Othus, a doctoral student in the Department of Biostatistics, Harvard University, received a Health Policy Statistics Section student award for her paper, "A Class of Semiparametric Mixture Cure Survival Models With Dependent Censoring," at the 2008 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) in Denver, CO. Ms. Othus coauthored this paper with Yi Li, Ph.D., her thesis advisor, and Ram Tiwari, Ph.D., formerly of SRAB.Her work with Dr. Li on the development of statistical methodologies for the analysis of data with complex censoring mechanisms was motivated by and is applicable to population-based cancer studies, as well as various issues in racial disparities in cancer cures, a new and promising field. Part of her thesis also won a 2008 Eastern North American Region (ENAR) student award. Dr. Li stated, "It has been a great experience to be working with Megan as she is such a highly motivated and organized student and researcher." (To see the official citation, click on link in first paragraph and scroll down the page.)
Endowed Fellowship for International Ph.D. Students
The Department is pleased to announce the creation of a new endowed fellowship program for international Ph.D. students. The Vasilios S. Lagakos Fellowship is intended for international Ph.D. students who plan to return to their home country to advance biostatistics and public health upon completion of their Ph.D. degree. For details, click here.
Sharon-Lise Normand Chosen New President-Elect of ENAR
Sharon-Lise Normand, Professor of Health Care Policy (Biostatistics), Harvard Medical School and Professor, Department of Biostatistics, Harvard School of Public Health, is the new President-Elect of the Eastern North American Region of the International Biometric Society (ENAR). Sharon will assume this office on January 1, 2009. Congratulations Sharon!
Yi Li to Deliver Address
Dr. Yi Li has been selected to deliver the inaugural Yakovlev Colloquium at University of Rochester on September 18th in memory of former department chair Andrei Yakovlev who died unexpectedly earlier this year.
Department Welcomes Our Incoming Class
The incoming class to the Department of Biostatistics consists of 27 students. Of the twenty new students, 14 are enrolled in our Ph.D. doctoral program, and 13 in our Master's program. Of these new degree students, 15 are U.S. citizens or permanent residents and 12 are international students. There are 12 women and 15 men, and their prior degrees are distributed as follows (2 with a Ph.D., 1 with an M.D., 6 have at least a prior Master's degree, 18 enter with Bachelor's degrees). The Department welcomes the new students to our program and wishes them every success during their stay with us and beyond.
The New Faces - (left to right) Front Row: Chelsea Hertzog, Tamar Tsivion, Linda Valeri, Wai-ki Yip, Anthony Lee, Gavin Miyasato. Back Row: Yared Gurmu, Brendan Keenan, Xinyi Lin, Dandi Qiao, Wei Dai, Peter Lipman, Danielle Braun, Brian Sharkey, Kaustubh Adhikari, Miao Chen, Norman Huang, Jennifer Sinnott, Ravi Goyal, Andrew Correia.
The New Faces (photo 2 - we have a large class this year!) - (left to right): Yifan Zhang, Jang Ik Cho, Dana Berry, Hwanhee Hong, Lingling Shen. Missing from photos: Brian Gluck.
You may view a set of pictures of the incoming class taken from the 2008-2009 Photo Directory (internal only) here when they are made available.
Xihong Lin Wins Outstanding Achievement Award
Dr. Xihong Lin, Professor of Biostatistics at Harvard's School of Public Health, is the recipient of the Seventh Annual Janet L. Norwood Award for Outstanding Achievement by a Woman in the Statistical Sciences. She will accept the award at the University of Alabama at Birmingham on Wednesday, September 17, 2008. Congratulations, Xihong!
2008 Myrto Lefkopoulou Distinguished Lectureship Announcement
The Department is delighted to announce that Dr. Heping Zhang, Ph.D., Professor, Biostatistics, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale University School of Medicine, will be this year's recipient of the Myrto Lefkopoulou Distinguished Lectureship. Professor Zhang will present this lecture at the Department of Biostatistics on September 4, 2008. The lecture will be followed by a reception.
John L. McGoldrick Fellowship in Biostatistics in AIDS Research
We are happy to report that a new fellowship program has just been established to support the training of African-based HIV/AIDS researchers in quantitative methods. The John L. McGoldrick Fellowship in Biostatistics in AIDS Research was awarded to CBAR by its namesake as his class gift to Harvard on the occasion of his 45th anniversary of graduation. Details of the program can be found at http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/biostats/mcgoldrick/. We hope to have 2 fellows each year, with each staying for 4-6 months. Fellows will take coursework in biostatistical methods and become involved in research projects. The initial fellows are expected to arrive in January.
2008 Distinguished Alum Award
The Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health named Dr. Robert Strawderman, Professor, Department of Biological Statistics & Computational Biology, and Department of Statistical Science, Cornell University, recipient of the 2008 Distinguished Alum Award. Dr. Strawderman delivered a lecture on May 28, 2008 at Harvard University. The lecture title was "Profiling Pharmacy Expenditures in Managed Care: Some Statistical Considerations and Limitations".
2008 Marvin Zelen Leadership Award in Statistical Science
The Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health named Dr. Norman Breslow, Professor, Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of Washington, as the recipient of the 2008 Marvin Zelen Leadership Award in Statistical Science. The lecture entitled "The Case-Control Study: Origins, Modern Conception and Newly Available Methods of Analysis" was given on Friday, May 30 immediately following the Biostatistics/Schering-Plough Workshop at Harvard.
Annual Conference in Quantitative Genomics
Please join us for the second annual Conference in Quantitative Genomics on September 23-25, 2008. The annual conference is hosted by the Program in Quantitative Genomics at the Harvard School of Public Health, and is supported with a grant from the NCI and NHLBI. The conference is co-sponsored by the Harvard School of Public Health, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Harvard Medical School, as well as corporate sponsors, Applied Biosystems, Illumina Inc, and Roche.The goal of the 2008 conference, "Emerging Quantitative Issues in Parallel Sequencing (EQuIP-Seq)" is to examine the interplay between emerging sequencing technologies, basic and population sciences, and data analysis methods. It seeks to engage genetists, computational biologists, and statisticians, in discussions of technology, data, analysis and applications of massively parallel sequencing. We hope the conference will spur discussions and future developments in the field and generate a white-paper report.
The conference will focus on three important areas and aims at in-depth discussions of major quantitative issues in these three areas:
- Genomic and meta-genomic sequencing
- Phenotypes and Populations
- Transcriptome and transcription regulation
The conference consists of keynote and session presentations, along with panel discussions, roundtable discussions, and a technology forum. Keynote speakers are: Dr. George Church, Dr. Steve Elledge, Dr. George Weinstock, and Dr. Wing Wong. The list of speakers and other information including abstract submission and registration can be found on our website: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/pqg-annual-conference/index.html.
Harvard Biostats Team in the Boston AIDS Walk
Congratulations to the Harvard Biostats team for their participation in the Boston AIDS walk on June 3rd. This was their most successful year ever with 50+ team members and over $6,000 raised for the AIDS Action Committee of Boston. Many of the team walked or ran in memory of Robert Zackin and felt that it was special to have the opportunity to remember our friend and colleague together. Thanks to all who participated either through walking, running or donating. The funds raised meant a lot to the team and to folks who will benefit from the services of the AIDS Action Committee. Photos of this year's event can be found at http://fiamh.info/walk2008 or see the team photo at http://www.flickr.com/photos/aac/2569949821/in/set-72157605462702436/.
Because of doing such a great job fundraising for the AIDS walk this year, the Harvard Biostats team has been promoted to a gold team! They received a certificate of excellence from the AIDS Action Committee, and next year will be recognized in the walk as a gold team. More congratulations to the 2008 Harvard Biostat AIDS Walk team!
Bethany Hedt Wins Prestigious Award
Quoting from Harvard Public Health NOW, "She has won the 2008 Fang Ching Sun Memorial Award, which recognizes an outstanding graduating student who has demonstrated a commitment to promoting the health of underprivileged people. And she has chosen to make the people and region of southern Africa the focus of her life's work." We are so proud of her achievements, and wish her the best in the future. Congratulations, Bethany!
Congratulations Graduates!
The Department of Biostatistics would like to offer their congratulations and best wishes to our students who graduated in the 2008 Spring Commencement ceremony. Receiving a Doctorate of Philosophy degree were Martin Joseph Ankrah Aryee, Xavier Basagana Flores, Xiao Ding, David William Fardo, Bethany Lynn Hedt, Patrick Michael Loerch, Jessica Cara Mar, Samuel Alexander McDaniel, Liliana del Carmen Orellana, Lixia Pei, Caitlin Ravichandran, Rui Wang. Receiving a Master of Science degree were Maganizo Brave Chagomerana, Jie Kate Hu, Eben Elliott Kenah, Sabrina Khan, Lisa Anne Scoppettuolo, Ziming Xuan, and Baohui Bonnie Zhang. Jennifer Laura Dillon, Mariel McKenzie Finucane, Jessie Jann Hsu, Quanhong Lei-Gomez, Sharon Marie Lutz, and Miguel Marino received Master of Arts degrees. We wish our graduates much success in the future!
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Fall and Wintersession Course Evaluations
The Department would like to acknowledge and thank the following faculty for receiving excellent course evaluations during the Fall 2007 and Wintersession 2008 terms:Kimberlee Gauvreau (BIO 201)
John Orav (BIO 213)
Garrett Fitzmaurice (BIO 226)
Terence Fenton (BIO 111)
Aedin Culhane (BIO 503)
Sumeeta Srinivasan (BIO 504)
Rui Wang Wins ASA Award
We are pleased to announce that Rui Wang has been chosen as this year’s winner of the ASA Biopharmaceutical Section's Student Paper Award for her paper, “Testing and Interval Estimation for 2-Sample Survival Comparisons with Small Sample Sizes and Unequal Censoring,”. She will be presented the award at this year's JSM (Joint Statistical Meeting). Congratulations Rui!
Rui Wang Wins Department Teaching Award
Rui Wang won our first ever Department of Biostatistics Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award for the academic year 2006-2007. The department feels that to encourage a TA to go beyond the ordinary, there should be one special award given by the department for the TA whose work exceeds all expectations of their instructor. The award includes a special plaque and a monetary prize. Congratulations to you, Rui, and thank you for all your hard work!
Megan Othus Wins Byar Travel Award
Megan Othus has won one of the four Byar Travel Awards to attend the Joint Statistical Meetings this summer. Megan will be presented with a certificate and a $500 award at the Biometrics Section Business Meeting at the Joint Statistical Meetings in Denver on the evening of Monday, August 4, 2008. Megan is working on her doctoral dissertation under the guidance of Dr. Yi Li. Her topic is analysis of survival data with complex censoring mechanisms arising from large-scale population-based studies. Congratulations Megan!
2008 ENAR Distinguished Paper Awards
Doctoral students Megan Othus and Mike Wu have won 2008 ENAR Distinguished Paper Awards. Megan's paper is entitled "A Class of Semiparametric Mixture Cure Survival Models with Dependent Censoring," and Mike's paper is entitled "A Parametric Permutation Test for Regression Coefficients in LASSO Regularized Regression for High Dimensional Data." They presented their papers in the March 2008 spring meeting in Arlington, VA. Congratulations to Megan and Mike!
Xihong Lin wins Award for Best Biometrics Paper for 2007
Xihong Lin's paper with co-authors Dawei Liu from Brown University and Debashis Ghosh from Penn State, "Semiparametric regression for multi-dimensional genomic pathway data: Least square kernel machines and linear mixed models", has been selected as the best Biometrics paper for 2007. The paper appeared in volume 63 of the journal, pages 1079-1088. The work will be presented as an invited Biometrics "showcase" session organized by the Biometrics Co-Editors at the International Biometric Conference (IBC) to be held July 2008 in Dublin, Ireland. The session is scheduled for Tuesday, July 15, 2008. Congratulations, Xihong, on a wondeful achievement!
2008 Distinguished Alum Award
We are pleased to announce that Robert Strawderman has been selected to receive the 2008 Distinguished Alum award. Rob completed his doctorate from the Department in 1992, and is currently a Professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. Rob will be presented his award at a lecture on Wednesday, May 28, 2008 at 4 pm in FXB-G12. All faculty, students and alum are invited to the occasion.
2008 Zelen Leadership Award Announced
The Department is delighted to announce that Dr. Norman Breslow, Professor, Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of Washington, has been named as the recipient of the 2008 Marvin Zelen Leadership Award in Statistical Science. Dr. Breslow will speak at the Department of Biostatistics Schering-Plough Workshop on May 30, 2008.
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