Department of biostatistics has strong showing at Florida Statistical Association meeting

The UF department of biostatistics was represented by many faculty and student participants at the annual meeting of the Florida Chapter of the American Statistical Association, or ASA, held March 29-30 at Florida State University. Founded in 1839, the American Statistical Association is the world’s largest community of statisticians. It is the second-oldest, continuously operating professional association in the country. The ASA has supported excellence in the development, application and dissemination of statistical science, and its mission is to promote the practice and profession of statistics. The Florida chapter of ASA has nine university associations affiliated in its membership.

The following faculty and students in the department of biostatistics, were in attendance:

  • Rhonda Bacher, Ph.D., an assistant professor, is the ASA Florida Chapter president.
  • Ji-Hyun Lee, Ph.D., a professor and associate director for the division of quantitative sciences at the UF Health Cancer Center, gave a keynote talk at the banquet. Lee is the national ASA president-elect and begins her term as president next year.
  • Tuo Lin, Ph.D., a research assistant professor and member of the Cancer Center, received an Early Career Statistician travel award to present his paper, “Inference for gaussian random fields on lattices and their application to fMRI data.”
  • Shoumi Sarkar, a doctoral student, won an award for her oral presentation on “Using machine learning methods such as multiblock partial least squares for analyzing metagenomics data.”
  • Zibo Tian, a doctoral student, won a travel award to the conference based on his paper submission, “Longitudinal risk monitoring for multiple diseases using multivariate single-index logistic regression.”