The Summer Institute for Training in Biostatistics or SIBS is offered by the Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics in collaboration with the Department of Statistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The program gives approximately 20 undergraduate students majoring in the quantitative sciences the opportunity to explore a career in biostatistics and bioinformatics. It is well recognized that the number of MS and PhD trained biostatisticians has not increased sufficiently to keep up with the dramatic increase in the number of available positions in academic industry and government medical research institutions. Our goal is to provide a summer program for undergraduate majors in mathematics, computer science or other quantitative sciences to expose them to the field of biostatistics, the type of applications of biostatistics in basic and clinical research, and the career opportunities to apply mathematical science to develop new methods for design and analysis of resulting data. The ultimate goal is to stimulate their interest in this field such that they will apply to graduate school in biostatistics or statistics. Over a six-week summer school session participants will be engaged in two 3-credit courses for a total of 6 credits that can transfer back to participants' undergraduate institutions to complete part of their major or minor. The first course will be an Introduction to Concepts in Biostatistics which will provide an overview of fundamental statistical concepts and a practical working knowledge of the basic statistical techniques they are likely to encounter in applied research. A second course, """"""""Practicum in Basic Biostatistics,"""""""" will give students exposure to analyzing data from basic science experiments, clinical trials and observational studies. Data sets available in the department as well as those provided by the NHLBI will be assembled. After the students have been given sufficient training in the statistical languages R and S-Plus, they will have a weekly project to discover the power of the statistical methods presented in the weekly lectures. Through this process, we believe that students will see the opportunities that biostatistics provides to contribute in a meaningful way to the progress of medical and population health research.
| Sprague, Brian L; Trentham-Dietz, Amy; Gangnon, Ronald E et al. (2011) Socioeconomic status and survival after an invasive breast cancer diagnosis. Cancer 117:1542-51 |
