The Biostatistics Resource Group (BRG) provides biostatistical collaboration, consultation, and quantitative research resources to clinical, laboratory, and prevention scientists at MD Anderson who are engaged in the planning, analysis, quality assurance, and interpretation of research studies. The BRG has pioneered the use of the Bayesian approach in adaptive clinical trials, particularly, in the Phase I and Phase II settings. The consultation and collaboration services of the BRG (in hours) have grown by 10% over the past 5 years. The primary equipment and technology of the BRG is a well-supported computing environment that extends across varied operating systems: Windows, Unix/Linux, and Mac OS X;providing access to more than SO non-standard desktop, client, and server applications;more than 300 terabytes of in-house storage space for home directories, research data, and data mirrors;and to in-house parallel computing capability through a 48-processor Cray XD1 HPC cluster and a 290-processor distributed computing Condor pool composed of over 160 Windows workstations (with at least 2GB of memory) and 8 servers (ranging from 4GB to 16GB of memory). BRG services have been used by 1070 researchers over the past five years, with 79% of the use by peer-reviewed cancer center members. The BRG is requesting funding from the CCSG in the amount of 9% of the total operating budget. Publications cited using the BRG have appeared in several high impact journals such as JAMA, J Clin Oncol and J Natl Cancer Inst. Annually, MD Anderson has provided institutional support to the BRG in the amount of $3,952,162. The BRG will continue to attract highly-qualified biostatistics faculty and to encourage their participation in multidisciplinary collaborative research;to hire and train highly-qualified statistical analysts and to encourage their professional growth through advanced education in statistics methodology and the application of computational tools;to instruct and mentor talented graduate and postdoctoral researchers;and to design innovative biostatistical approaches that promote discovery in cancer research. The BRG will continue to be the world's leading group in the development and application of Bayesian methodology for medical research.
The BRG provides statistical collaboration and consultation services in support of cancer research in laboratory experiments and clinical trials, plays a direct role in the planning and review of clinical protocols, provides educational programs in biostatistical methods, and designs, develops, distributes, and implements software and database systems to support various computational needs of cancer researchers.
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