Regional Newsletter, December 2019
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Regional Newsletter, December 2019 Regional Newsletter, December 2019 Elizabeth (Fizz) Williamson (LSHTM) and (out-going) In this issue vice-president Martin Ridout (University of Kent) as their ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON elected terms come to an end. However, I am very Welcome to the Winter 2019-2020 issue of the newsletter pleased to welcome Kirsty Hassall (Rothamstead Re- of the British and Irish Region of the IBS. Due to unavoid- search; who continues her time on the committee after able absences, we had no summer newsletter so this is a joining in 2018) and Andy Lynch (University of St An- bumper edition! As well as the usual offerings from our drews) as incoming elected committee members; and regional officers, we have a brief introduction to a new Dan Farewell as the (incoming) vice-president before he committee member (Andy Lynch), reports from meetings takes up the role as president in 2021. Kirsty will also take that have happened over the last year, reports from bur- on the important communication role from Fizz as the sary awardees, and a note about an exciting upcoming Biometric Bulleting and BIR newsletter correspondent. meeting in the field of statistical genetics and genomics. Finally, in terms of committee members, Emanuele Gior- Kirsty Hassall will be taking over the newsletter after gio (Lancaster University) will also step down from the this issue. If you have any items or news you would like to committee at the end of this calendar year so that Rafael share with the society in future newsletters, please send De Andrade Moral (Maynooth University) has been co- a message to [email protected]. opted on to the committee for 2020. Thank you to Emanuele for his contributions to the committee! And President’s corner welcome to Rafael. I am looking forward to the forthcoming calendar RUTH KING year with meetings already being organised for spring It is amazing to think that I am already half-way through and autumn before the AGM and presidential address at my presidency of the BIR. Looking at the round-up of the end of the year. I very much hope to see many of you IBS activity this year (including the Young Biometrician at one (or more) of these local meetings! There is also the Award; Channel Network Conference report; training International Biometrics Conference in Seoul (South Ko- workshop activity; organised/sponsored events;…) it is rea) in July. Next year we will be launching a new initia- great to see strong young talent within the biometric sci- tive to celebrate the use of modern infographics for effi- ences in the BIR and enthusiastic members of our com- ciently and effectively conveying interesting and/or use- munity becoming involved with the IBS. Many thanks to ful biometric information (see later report). Additional all who contributed in the many different ways to the re- changes for next year also includes a revised BIR website gional activities (from co-organiser of events to judge to – there has been significant activity behind-the-scenes speaker/presenter to participant or applicant). However, working with the international society to modernise the unfortunately, offset with this is the continuing trend of webpages including some added functionality. Dan and a declining membership numbers for the society. This de- Kirsty have been leading the discussions in relation to cline is disappointing and thus a call to all in the BIR to this (see later item) – many thanks again! encourage colleagues and their students to join the so- To conclude – I hope to see many of you at one of the ciety (it is free for students to join!) and to become in- meetings next year – but if you have feedback or other volved, for example, by attending events; sending sug- suggestions or wish to become more involved with the gestions to the committee for further activities; or volun- society please do contact either myself or Rachel McCrea. teering to be a committee member or represent the soci- ety at conferences/meetings. Looking forward to the new calendar year I have Secretary’s Corner some thankyous (and goodbyes – but I am sure will meet RACHEL MCCREA again shortly at some IBS events!) to committee member My first year as secretary of the BIR is drawing to a close 1 Regional Newsletter, December 2019 and I would like to express my thanks to everyone on the molecular biology, and more applied work in under- committee who has helped me to work out the systems standing the biology of cancer (especially prostate can- and processes! It has been a very rewarding first year, cer), although I have several collaborations in other ar- working with a great committee and the next two years eas. For three years I was on the Conferences & Events will be even more eventful with a great selection of meet- Programme Board of the RSS, I have been on the orga- ings in the pipeline. This year the Channel Network Con- nizing committees of a number of European Bioconduc- ference was held in the UK and a special thanks goes to tor meetings, and helped organize the 2011 Isaac Newton committee members Kirsty and Lisa who devoted a lot of Institute programme on Design of Experiments. time to helping with the administrative side of this en- deavour and also to those individuals who assessed the bursary applications for this meeting. The Young Biome- Meeting reports trician Award was held this year and attracted a lot of ex- cellent nominations from across the UK and this is always 7th Channel Network Conference, a lovely competition to coordinate to see the high qual- Rothamsted UK, 10-12 July ity of the papers. Looking ahead to next year, the next Kirsty Hassall, CNC local organising committee IBC will be held in Seoul, South Korea in July. Please do Sunshine greeted around 120 delegates to the 2019 consider supporting this meeting by submitting abstracts 7th Channel Network Conference, a biennial conference and attending. hosted jointly by the British-Irish, France, Belgium and Netherlands regions of the IBS. This year, the conference Welcome to new committee took place at Rothamsted Research, the longest running agricultural research institute in the world and coincided members with the centenary celebrations of RA Fisher’s appoint- ment in 1919 to the institute. Andy Lynch The conference was a resounding success with atten- Since 2017 I have been the Professor of Statistics in Bio- dees from more than 65 organisations varying from Wa- science at the University of St Andrews, where I am based geningen University in the Netherlands, to the Univer- both in the School of Mathematics and Statistics and in sity of Washington in the US and onto the University of the School Medicine. Prior to this I spent a decade in re- Wollongong, Australia. search at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute following a number of post-doctoral research posts in Cambridge (medical statistics) and Newcastle (process control). My PhD from Sheffield was primarily on the topic of modelling crop yields and was partly sponsored by Horticulture Research International (Wellesbourne). 7th Channel Network Conference attendees. Per Andersen from the University of Copenhagen gave the keynote lecture on Multi-State Models in Medical Re- New committee member: Andy Lynch. search. Topics of the conference covered all interests of the IBS ranging from methods development in the ‘omics to design of experiments. Invited sessions were organ- My research interests are split between development of ised around the topics of Intensive Longitudinal Data, analysis methods for the data from new technologies in Post-selection Inference in Regression, Complex Survival 2 Regional Newsletter, December 2019 Data and a special session was organised on the past, pre- cation, particularly in Alzheimer’s disease studies, most sent and future of statistics in agriculture. of my engagement, particularly in terms of conferences, A particular highlight was the 39th Fisher Memorial has been within the Bayesian and machine learning com- Lecture, given by Brian Cullis and Alison Smith on their munities. This conference provided me the opportunity work in the development of Design Tableau, thus closing to branch out and establish new connections. Moreover, the conference. the regional focus of the conference increases the possi- Of course, no conference is complete without some bility of further building on these connections. socialising. My personal favourite was watching 60 statis- My own talk focused on novel mixtures of experts ticians be loaded onto the back of a tractor-pulled trailer methodology, which we applied to predict cognitive de- and taken on a tour of the oldest and newest long-term cline in Alzheimer’s disease based on clinical and genetic field experiments. information. I enjoyed presenting to the diverse audi- Presentations and posters will be available to down- ence and receiving feedback. Moreover, the other talks load in due course - keep an eye out! within my session by Dr. Rouanet, also on mixtures of Gaussian processes applied to Alzheimer’s data, and Dr. Schepers, on biclustering, were very interesting and relevant, and I appreciated our discussions afterwards. In collaboration with colleagues at Edinburgh, I am exploring novel Bayesian clustering models for single- cell RNA sequencing data, as well as for integration of multiple and temporal omics data. I was quite intrigued to learn more about cutting edge research in this direc- tion on bioinformatics and statistical genetics. As I have a keen interest in Bayesian analysis, I also found the talks on Bayesian methodology and applications quite inter- esting. Lastly, I would like to close by once again thanking the organisers and the BIR and Fisher Memorial Trust, Channel Network Conference: Tour of field experiments.