The investigator and her colleagues will organize and conduct a Summer Research Conference (SRC) in statistics and biostatistics at the Hotel Galvez, in Galveston, Texas on June 1-4, 2014. The 2014 SRC will be the 50th anniversary of that conference. The SRC is an annual conference sponsored by the Southern Regional Council on Statistics (SRCOS). Its purpose is to encourage the interchange and mutual understanding of current research ideas in statistics and biostatistics, and to give motivation and direction to further research progress. The project will focus on young researchers, placing them in close proximity to leaders in the field for person-to-person interactions in a manner not possible at most other meetings. Speakers will present formal research talks with adequate time allowed for clarification, amplification, and further informal discussions in small groups. Under the travel support provided by this award students will attend and present their research in posters to be reviewed by more experienced researchers.

The Southern Regional Council on Statistics is a consortium of statistics and biostatistics programs in the South, stretching as far west as Texas and as far north as Maryland. It currently has member programs at 43 universities in 14 states in the region. This project will fund student participation in the 2014 Summer Research Conference (SRC) sponsored by SRCOS. The meeting is particularly valuable for students and faculty from smaller regional schools at drivable distances, affording them the opportunity to participate and interact closely with internationally-known leaders in the field without the cost of travel to distant national or international venues. It will strengthen the research of the statistics and biostatistics community as a whole, and particularly in the relatively underdeveloped southern region. For all details, go to the conference link at http://srcos2014.rice.edu.

Project Report

The principle investigator (PI) and her colleagues organized and conducted a Summer Research Conference (SRC) in statistics and biostatistics at the Hotel Galvez, in Galveston, Texas on June 1-4, 2014. The 2014 SRC was the 50th anniversary of that conference. The SRC is an annual conference sponsored by the Southern Regional Council on Statistics (SRCOS). Broader Impact and Intellectual Merit. The purpose of the SRC is to encourage the interchange and mutual understanding of current research ideas in statistics and biostatistics, and to give motivation and direction to further research progress. The conference focuses on young researchers, placing them in close proximity to leaders in the field for person-to-person interactions in a manner not possible at most other meetings. To attract leaders in the field of statistics, plenary and invited sessions are organized, where the statisticians presented formal research talks with adequate time allowed for clarification, amplification, and further informal discussions in small groups. A list of the sessions is provided below, with the names and affiliations of the speakers in those session. A full program and abstract booklet are available on the conference web site at www.srcos2104.rice.edu/program/. Session I: Causal Inference. Speakers were Brent Johnson of Emory University, Chenguang Wang of Johns Hopkins University, and Marie Davidian of North Carolina State University. Plenary Session I. Plenary speaker Anastosios (Butch) Tsiatis of North Carolina State University. Bibhas Chakroborty of Duke provided a discussion after Dr. Tsiatis’s talk. Session II. History of SRCOS. Drs. Robert Taylor (Clemson University), W.J. Padgett (University of South Carolina), and Michael Kutner (Emory Univeristy) are all long-time very active members of the SRCOS. The three of them presented a history of the SRCOS based on the papers on-line at http://web1.sph.emory.edu/srcos//history.htm on the 2006 paper in volume 26, issue number 5, pp. 373-383 of the Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation "The summer research conferences and the SRCOS: a historical perspective," by Taylor and Padgett. Session III. Complex Longitudinal Data. The three speakers in this session were Michael Daniels of the University of Texas, Jonathan Schildcrout of Vanderbilt University, and Jeremy Gaskins of the University of Louisville. Plenary Session II. Peter Mueller of the University of Texas was Austin was the featured speaker for Plenary Session II. Wenyi Wang from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center was the discussant for the session. Session IV. Survival Analysis. Speakers were Xuelin Haung of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Lianming Wang, and Akim Adekpedjou on some recent results on recurrent events modeling. Session V. Big Data. The three speakers for this session were Jinahua Huang of Texas A&M University, Yichao Wu of North Carolina State University, and Genevera Allen of Rice University. More on Broader Impact and Intellectual Merit. The PI requested monies to support student travel to the SRC. Under the travel support provided by this award, a record number of students from 21 colleges and universities attended the SRC and presented their research in posters. The student posters were judged by a panel selected by D’Arcy Mayes of Virginia Commonwealth. The panel of faculty judges was composed of Don Edwards (University of South Carolina), Susan Simmons (University of North Carolina at Wilmington), Brent Johnson (Emory University), Mike Daniels (University of Texas at Austin), Norou Diawara (Old Dominion University), Arnold Stromberg (University of Kentucky) and Ken Berenhaut (Wake Forest University). From the set of sixty posters, the M. Clinton Miller award for Best Student Poster went to Derick Rivers of Virginia Commonwealth University. R.L. Anderson runner-up student poster awards went to Semhar Michael (University of Alabama ), Manjari Narayan (Rice University), Nicolas Flores Castillo (Rice University), Matthew Ginley (Rice University), and to Oleg Melnikov and Sergii Babkin (both of Rice University) for their joint work. While the project deadline is Sept., 2015, the conference has concluded, and SRCOS is now planning for SRC, 2015.

Agency
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Institute
Division of Mathematical Sciences (DMS)
Type
Standard Grant (Standard)
Application #
1405011
Program Officer
Gabor Szekely
Project Start
Project End
Budget Start
2014-06-01
Budget End
2015-05-31
Support Year
Fiscal Year
2014
Total Cost
$13,000
Indirect Cost
Name
Baylor University
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
Waco
State
TX
Country
United States
Zip Code
76798