This proposal request funds to support travel expenses of approximately 30 U.S. based scientists, of whom approximately ten participants have an official capacity such as organizers and invited speakers and approximately twenty are young investigators (including women and minorities), to attend the International Biometric Conference scheduled for Freiburg, Germany July 2002; Cairns, Australia July 2004; and a U.S. location July 2006, with an support for additional 5 international scientists requested for the U.S. Conference. The strength of the meetings lies in the broad international participation of statisticians, biologists and mathematicians interested in quantitative and statistical aspects of agriculture, biology, genetics, epidemiology, pharmacology, medicine, ecology, public health and other fields. Topics to be discussed on statistical issues directly related to these areas include longitudinal studies, measurement error in exposure health data, clinical trials, mixed models, survival analysis, factorial designs, unbalanced data, cofounders, functional regression, spatial analysis, medical diagnostics, and serological methods, all of which have direct bearing on solutions to the major concerns of today, especially on cancer research and biomedical research such as AIDS and heart disease. In addition, discussions on fundamental statistical issues of repeated measures, structural inference, image processing and causal inference all have direct application to current health related and environmental sciences. It is anticipated that the Conference, which is the major international meeting of biostatisticians and biometricians throughout the world will be attended by 600 or more scientists from the international community.
