Regional Newsletter, December 2017 Regional Newsletter, December 2017 The BIR Committee is an ever-changing entity and In this issue I’d like to welcome new members Ruth King (incoming ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON & ROLAND LANGROCK Vice President), Nicole Augustin and Mike Sweeting (BIR Welcome to the slightly belated December 2017 issue of members of IBS Representative Council) and Emanuele the BIR Newsletter. This issue contains reports from our Giorgi, Ruth Keogh and Kirsty Hassall (ordinary commit- recent meeting celebrating young biometricians, as well tee members). Amongst the departures, John Matthews as updates and news from our regional officers. We pro- has completed his term as outgoing Vice President, and vide details of upcoming meetings and conferences, in- I’d like to reiterate my thanks to John for all his support cluding the International Biometric Conference to be during my own period as President. Roland Langrock has held in Barcelona in July 2018. Do make a note of our amongst other things done a fine job of producing this forthcoming events in your diary. We would love to hear Newsletter. Mark Brewer has finished his term as Trea- from you if you have items to share in future newsletters. surer, a job that he has done with quiet efficiency for To get in touch, just send a message to eliza- several years. Mark continues his involvement with the [email protected]. Society as a member of the IBS Executive Board. Lisa McFetridge (previously McCrink) has been re-elected to President’s corner the Committee as our new Treasurer. By the time I write my next President’s Corner, the MARTIN RIDOUT IBC in Barcelona will be almost upon us and I hope that One of the main things that the Region does is to support the convenient location will encourage many members career-young Biometricians. This is evident through free of the BIR to attend and engage with international col- student membership and support for attending Interna- leagues. tional Biometric Conferences and Channel Network Con- ferences through bursaries that are jointly funded by the Fisher Memorial Trust. In addition, during his term as Celebrating Young Biometri- President some years ago my colleague Byron Morgan cians! initiated the biennial Young Biometrician Award, also co- SUE WELHAM sponsored by the Fisher Memorial Trust. This year it ran for the fourth time, attracting a strong field of entries, This meeting on 28th November, following our AGM, and I’m very grateful to Rosemary Bailey, Simon Thomp- gave a platform for the three most recent winners of the son and Graham Hepworth, for undertaking the difficult Young Biometrician Award to talk about their work. The task of judging the entries. AGM ended with presentation of the 2017 Award to Anaïs Following the 2017 AGM, our autumn meeting fea- Rouanet of the MRC Biostatistics Unit in Cambridge, and tured talks by this year’s winner, Anaïs Rouanet, and the Anaïs then gave a presentation on the work in her award- previous two winners David Robertson and Doug Speed, winning paper. Anaïs talked about modelling the course all of whom gave excellent talks. The meeting finished of dementia to identify risk factors, allowing for some with a talk by ex-BIR and ex-IBS president John Hinde, heterogeneity in the progress of the disease across differ- who spoke about ‘Translational Statistics’. ent sub-groups of the population, with these sub-groups The autumn meeting was held in the comfortable sur- identified within the analysis. Her model recognises that roundings of the Hardy room at the London Mathemat- cognitive ability is only measured periodically, and that ical Society. There is another chance to visit the same the risk of death is also present, and may be related or venue on 18 April 2018 for our next meeting which is on not to the presence of dementia. One interesting out- the theme of recent developments of the bootstrap. come of the model is the ability to quantify the expected course of natural cognitive decline as opposed to that in- 1 Regional Newsletter, December 2017 duced by dementia. Anaïs gave a clear account of a model addressing a complex and important biological problem, an excellent biometrical application. The second talk was given by David Robertson (also of the MRC Biostatistics Unit), winner of the 2015 Award. David spoke on methods for correcting for selection bias in two-stage trials, where candidates are identified at the first stage of a process then studied in more detail at a second stage. An unbiased estimate can be obtained from just the second-stage data, but it is more efficient to use the data from both stages so long as the selection process is recognised within the estimation process. Examples included the identification of questions with good pow- David Hughes — honourable mention in the YBA 2017 er to predict disease risk in a Family History Question- naire and SNPs within a genome-wide association study (GWAS). The third talk was given by Doug Speed (now at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies in Denmark). Doug was the winner of the 2013 Award and gave an entertain- ing account of the lively published discussion surround- ing his award-winning paper on estimating heritability associated with SNPs in GWAS. The dispute concerned the relative performance of the method in Doug’s pa- per (LDAK) with a well-known alternative, with the two methods sometimes giving very different answers. Un- surprisingly, both methods perform well under simula- tion when the assumptions underlying that method are Emily Dennis — honourable mention in the YBA 2017 present in the simulated data, which highlights an im- portant question about the value of simulation studies. The discussion is still ongoing, and is one that biometri- cians analysing GWAS studies should watch. The final talk of the afternoon was given by John Hinde, former President of the region and the interna- tional society. John talked about the concept of trans- lational statistics. This recognises that many statistical concepts and outputs from analysis are difficult to under- stand for many people without good mathematical skills, and seeks to find ways to make both the results and their associated uncertainty easier to understand so that re- searchers can make best use of them. He also touched on the issue of reproducible research, ensuring that trials can be replicated and the analysis validated. The slides from all 4 talks are available to BIR mem- bers on our regional website at http://bir.biometricsociety.org/events/ybameet. Anaïs Rouanet, winner of the YBA 2017 2 Regional Newsletter, December 2017 This type of model is of interest for etiologic analyses Report from the winner of the to distinguish different profiles of cognitive decline asso- Young Biometrician Award ciated with risks of dementia and death, to identify ho- mogeneous sub-groups in the population for precision ANAÏS ROUANET medicine purposes, or to compute individual dynamic I am truly honored to receive the Young Biometrician predictions of the time to dementia based on repeated Award from these two prestigious societies, and thankful markers. for the recognition given to young researchers. This rep- In my current project, I extend mixture models in or- resents a significant boost in our early career and great der to handle different types of markers, such as longi- encouragement to pursue what motivates us. I also really tudinal cognitive tests and/or brain imaging biomarkers enjoyed meeting the members of the IBS-BIR committee and highly correlated genetic ones, in an Bayesian inte- and the previous YB awardees in London. grative analysis. This is part of the Dementia Platform I completed my PhD, supervised by Hélène Jacqmin- UK project created by the MRC, which aims at giving ac- Gadda, in the Biostatistics team of the Inserm Research cess to a large data resource for person-focused demen- Center (Bordeaux, France) in 2016 and I am currently tias research in order to fast-track scientific understand- working as a research associate in the Medical Research ing, treatments and prevention of the disease. Council Biostatistics Unit, Cambridge University (UK) with Brian Tom and Sylvia Richardson. My research is fo- cused on the study of dementia, which is one of the main IBC 2018 - Barcelona causes of dependency and disability among the elderly, SUE WELHAM with a growing burden as the world’s population is age- The 2018 IBC will be held at the Barcelona International ing. In 2012, the World Health Organization recognized Convention Centre during July 8-13. The deadline for dementia as a public health priority, rising awareness on submission of abstracts for contributed papers and its health, social and economic costs. My work aims at posters has been extended to 19th January. The BIR (in studying and developing statistical methods to better un- association with Fisher Memorial Trust) has a bursary derstand the natural history of dementia and cognitive scheme for young biometricians (details in another arti- ageing and to enhance earlier diagnosis based on repeat- cle) but this requires presentation of a paper or poster, ed measures of cognitive markers. so do remember to submit an abstract if you wish to ap- In studies of pre-dementia cognitive decline, cogni- ply to this scheme. The IBS also has a competition open tive decline and time-to-dementia onset are highly cor- to young biometricians presenting their work, called the related. Moreover, cognitive decline is known to be het- ‘Young Biometricians Showcase Competition’ which pro- erogeneous in the population. The competing risk of vides funding of up to US$3000 to attend the conference death must also be considered in the elderly as death and (full details via https://www.biometricsociety.org/2017/ dementia have common risk factors.