Statistical conference at UAF

Submitted by Dana Thomas
Phone: (907) 474-6103
06/15/05

The Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks will host the 2005 joint meeting of the Western North America Region of the International Biometrics Society and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, June 21-24, 2005, in the Natural Sciences Facility. This regional meeting will draw about 200 statisticians, biometricians and biostatisticians to Fairbanks. This year’s conference will feature two short courses, Bayesian Clinical Trials by Scott Berry and Active Set Adaptive Sampling by Steve Thompson.

Scott Berry received his bachelor of science degree in mathematics from the University of Minnesota, and his master’s and Ph.D. in statistics from Carnegie Mellon University. He spent five years as an assistant professor of statistics at Texas A&M University, and is currently a statistical scientist for Berry Consultants. Berry’s research interests are in Bayesian statistics, specifically in the design and analysis of clinical trials, hierarchical modeling, Bayesian computation, decision analysis and applications to sports.

Steve Thompson is the author of two textbooks, Sampling and Adaptive Sampling, published by Wiley Publications. He started his academic teaching career at UAF. Most recently he was at Pennsylvania State University and Los Alamos National Lab, but is moving to a new position at Simon Fraser University this fall. Thompson earned a Ph.D. at Oregon State University in Corvallis. He is also the world’s authority on adaptive sampling.

Presentation topics include bioinformatics, cancer research statistics, statistical methods to assess global climate change and statistical models for animal movement. For more specific details on the conference visit the website at www.uaf.edu/wnar.