BIOSTAT E-NEWS

Volume 1, Issue 1 – October 12, 2004

This quarterly bulletin is distributed to the alumni of the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Washington.
To include your news in future issues, e-mail E-News editor Elaine Riot at elainer@u.washington.edu

Alumni Profiles: in their own words

Former students choose from a list of suggested questions to create their own unique alumni profile.

Name: Dave Glidden

Biostat Degree/Year: Ph.D, 1993

Current Job/Employer: Associate Professor of Biostatistics, University of California, San Francisco

Favorite book(s): You mean besides Vittinghoff, Glidden, Shiboski and McCulloch, Regression methods in biostatistics, to be published by Springer in early 2005?

Biostatistics: Therneau and Grambsch: Modeling survival data

Fiction: Chabon: The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay

All-too-real: Franken: Lies and the lying liars who tell them

Favorite web sites: work, http://isiwebofknowledge.com/; humor, http://www.comedycentral.com/tv_shows/thedailyshowwithjonstewart/; politics: http://www.democraticunderground.com/

Hobby: I am an avid road cyclist. I ride all over the SF Bay Area and participate in most of the local century rides.

Research interests: multivariate survival data, repeated and multistate event data, genetic linkage analysis.

Interesting biostat publication: You mean plug my work again? Glidden, DV. (2002). Robust inference for non-Markov data. Biometrics 58: 361-8.

Current research: My colleagues and I wrote an introductory textbook this year. It wasn’t pretty.

Personal milestones: I did my first 200K (126mi) ride this year. That wasn’t too pretty either.

Favorite reminiscence about biostat days: In particular, I remember Lloyd Mancl locked himself out of his office in the basement and crawled under the subfloor to get in. I had to stomp on the ground to direct him to his office. He doesn’t seem to remember this but it made a real impression on me. In general, I remember a community of bright friendly and helpful students; they were really dedicated to mastering the material and I learned a lot from my fellow students. For instance, Grazia Valsecchi taught me to make risotto.

Fellow alumni are welcome to contact me at: dave@biostat.ucsf.edu.

Other comments: I had a great time this August at the ISCB meetings in Leiden. It was a great chance to see fellow alumni and friends Marie Reilly (’91) and Grazia Valsecchi (’89), to catch up with Margaret Pepe (’86) and to meet Brian Langholz (’84).

Name: Jill Fujisaki

Photo: Jill with her son, Oliver, at the Berkeley Kite Festival.

Biostat Degree/Year: M.S., Biomathematics, 1985

Current Job/Employer: Co-founder and V.P., Scientific Alliances, at Entelos, Inc., located in the San Francisco Bay Area. Entelos specializes in building computer simulation models of human physiology. We work in partnership with pharmaceutical companies (e.g., Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Akzo Nobel) to better understand biological processes underlying such complex diseases as arthritis, asthma, diabetes, obesity, and metabolic syndrome, looking for better drug targets, biomarkers, and treatment regimens to optimize R&D. The company employs about 70 people, mostly Ph.D.-level engineers and life scientists, as well as software developers and business professionals. My roles at the company have always straddled both science and business, and one of my most enjoyable jobs has been recruiting scientists and clinicians for our Scientific Advisory Boards. I now only work part-time for the company, and focus on market research/business analysis projects, and spend most of my days gardening, cycling, and raising our 4 ½-year old son, Oliver. Prior to Entelos, I did consulting for biotech companies in the Bay Area; and before that, I worked as a programmer and then statistician at Syntex Research in Palo Alto, CA, a mid-sized pharmaceutical company.

Personal milestones: Married to Robert J. Cohen, a financial advisor and educator, and we have one delightful son, Oliver Mikio Cohen, born in January of 2000. We live in Berkeley, California.

Favorite reminiscence about biostat days: A quote from a classmate, Paul Kubilis, during a late-night discussion group: someone had mentioned the line from Star Trek “To boldly go where no man has gone before,” and Paul re-interpreted it as “To Go Bowling Where No Man Has Gone Before.”

Fellow alumni are welcome to contact me at: fujisaki@entelos.com.

Other Comments: I’d love to hear from former classmates and colleagues from U-Dub, and I’d also be happy to correspond with any recent or current students who are considering careers in bioinformatics, genomics, pharmaceuticals, biotech, or any health-related area.

Alumni Breakfast at Toronto JSM MeetingS

UW Biostat was honored to host an alumni reception at the Joint Statistical Meetings in Toronto in August. The event, attended by 16 alumni, included opening remarks by Assistant Professor XH “Andrew” Zhou and a department update by Associate Chair Norm Breslow, followed by a breakfast buffet. Breakfasting with current post-doc fellow Ofer Harel and Biostat faculty members Andrew, Norm, Nancy Temkin, Brian Leroux, and Gerald van Belle, were the following alums: Laura Johnson (PhD `02), Estelle Russek-Cohen (PhD `79), Debashis Ghosh (PhD `00), David W. Hosmer (PhD `71), Barbara Tilley (PhD `75), Kim Siegmund (PhD `95), Bin Nan (PhD `01), Paula Roberson (PhD `79), Clare Weinberg (PhD `80), Na Li (PhD `03), Gregory Warnes (PhD `00), Abhijit Dasgupta (PhD `00), Onchee Yu (MS `99) and Antje Hoering (post-doc `96-99). The group of former students enjoyed reconnecting and meeting fellow alums at the reception, which was held in the Bistro Restaurant at the Sheraton Centre Toronto.

The Department will continue to host such an event at the JSM every year. We would love to hear from our alumni about what kinds of activities they’d prefer. We’d also like to know whether or not alumni would be willing to contribute to offset some of expenses associated with hosting, depending upon the activity chosen. Please direct any suggestions to Andrew Zhou at azhou@u.washington.edu.

CHAIR SEARCH – TOM FLEMING STEPPING DOWN AFTER 13 YEARS

Biostat Chairman Tom Fleming will be stepping down next summer after serving his 10 year term and then some – 13 years in all! During this period, our student body has grown to record size and the strength and breadth of our faculty has steadily increased. One key focus has been the recruitment of junior level faculty. “The uncommonly high percentage of new junior faculty has brought additional energy (to the Department),” says Tom, “and has ensured that senior faculty are regularly challenged to consider new ideas in research and education.”

With great spirit and commitment, Tom Fleming has led us through many changes, improvements and challenges. The result is a stronger and more diverse faculty, a more cohesive staff, major grant funding realized through enlivened research productivity, an expanded graduate curriculum (i.e., statistical genomics and genetics), higher visibility through events like the Seattle Symposium series, and the implementation of new initiatives designed to enhance Department culture, including faculty mentoring and career development funding for faculty at the junior ranks. In addition, during his tenure as Chair, endowments have risen tenfold to about $2 million, partially covering significant state shortfalls in funding departmental student fellowships, faculty research and teaching.

The School of Public Health and Community Medicine (SPHCM) has formed a committee to search for the next Chair of the Department—please look for the search ad in major statistics and education journals in the coming months.

BRESLOW PAPER MOST CITED IN MATH FIELD OVER PAST DECADE

Norm Breslow’s paper, Approximate inference in generalized linear mixed models, (J. Amer. Statist. Assn. 88[421]:9-25, March 1993), is currently the most-cited paper in the field of mathematics over the past decade, with a whopping 543 citations to date. In a recent article at in-cites.com, Norm was asked why the paper has become so influential.

“A major reason is that it constituted a synthesis of two important branches of statistical methodology, generalized linear models with linear mixed models, which we termed generalized linear mixed models,” said Norm. “This jargon seems to have entered the vocabulary of the field. We also were the first to use the phrase ‘penalized quasi-likelihood,’ or PQL. PQL is not a methodology. It’s an ad hoc way of approximating a maximum likelihood solution in generalized linear mixed models and it doesn’t always work well. But it caught on.” To read the rest of this compelling article about the history of Norm’s paper and his more recent research, visit http://www.in-cites.com/papers/DrNormanBreslow.html.

Third Seattle Symposium in Biostatistics – Save the Date!

Mark your calendars for Nov 21-22, 2005—the dates of the Third Seattle Symposium in Biostatistics: Statistical Genomics and Genetics, sponsored by Rosetta/Merck. Keynote speakers at the symposium, which will honor the 35th anniversary of the SPHCM, include David Cox, Consulting Professor of Genetics, Stanford University; Elizabeth Thompson, Professor of Statistics, UW; and Wing Wong, Professor of Biostatistics, Harvard. We plan to have an alumni event in conjunction with the symposium, and welcome any volunteers to help create a memorable affair.

A companion genomics and genetics short course will be held Nov 19-20, and will cover the design and analysis of microarrays and the analysis of population genetic data. Short course instructors will include UW Biostat Professors Katie Kerr and John Storey, Stanford Health and Research Policy Professor Rob Tibshirani, UW Statistics/Genome Sciences Professor Matthew Stephens, and Oxford Statistics Professor Jonathan Pritchard. The Seattle Symposium series has provided enhanced visibility for the research leadership of UW and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (FHCRC) faculty, and the third in the series promises to be another major success.

Ross Prentice Endowed Professorship

The Department recently created an endowed professorship to honor the contributions of Ross Prentice, long time biostatistics faculty member and leader at the FHCRC. Ross is the Principal Investigator of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) and Senior Vice-President at the FHCRC. He has made seminal contributions to biostatistical theory in both survival analysis and case-control studies with covariate adjustment. Ross’ many honors include the Purdue Frederick Award (ACOG), the Mortimer Spiegelman Award (of the American Public Health Association), and the Council of President's of Statistical Societies Award as the most outstanding statistician under forty. The Ross Prentice Endowed Professorship will fund activities that promote collaboration between the Department of Biostatistics and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. If you’re interested in contributing to this fund, click here.

ALUMNI SNAPSHOTS

Zoe Moodie (PhD `01) and husband Jon Wakefield (Prof, Biostat and Stat) recently welcomed their daughter, Eleanor "Ellie" Anna Wakefield into the world. Ellie, named for Zoe's grandmother, was born 3.01am on Tuesday, October 5th, weighing 7 pounds 6 ounces, and measuring 19.75 inches.

Greetings from Kara Cushing Haugen (M.S., `96), husband Steve, daughter Neva (3) and son Turner (1). Kara is working as a statistical research associate at the Hutch—she’s been there since she graduated and has worked half time since the birth of her daughter. The family recently moved to Newcastle, and spends a lot of their free time in Montana.

This little 14-month-old firecracker is Alisa Hade Craigmile, daughter of proud parents Erinn Hade (M.S., `01) and husband Peter Craigmile (Stat 2000). Alisa was born July 15, 2003. 

Kudos!

  Biostat students Chuan Zhou and Lihong Qi both won the title of first runner-up (tie) in the WNAR/IMS Student Paper Competition at the WNAR/IMS 2004 Spring Meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Chuan presented "A Bayesian hierarchical mixture model for curve clustering," and Lihong presented "Weighted estimators for proportional hazards regression with missing covariates."  Paula Diehr (Prof, Biostat) delivered the spring Distinguished Faculty Lecture, Aging, Dying and Changes in Health: What Can We Learn from Longitudinal Data?  Michael Dermond, computer system administrator at the Collaborative Health Studies Coordinating Center (aka CHS), won this year’s Outstanding Staff Award.  Sebastian Haneuse (PhD, `04) won the Outstanding Student Award in spring 2004.

Here’s a pic of newlyweds Dave Yanez (Prof, Biostat) and Miriam Treggiari, being roasted by the irrepressible Tom Fleming (undoubtedly giving one of his famous “short” monologues). The couple was married in Glendale, AZ, where Dave’s family lives, on March 28, 2002. Miriam's family flew in from Italy. Zoe and Jon Wakefield, Sebastien Haneuse and Dan Boren (computer science) made up the Seattle contingent. Miriam is Doctor of Anesthesiology at Harborview and is writing a dissertation with Noel Weiss in Epidemiology.

Biostat-Stat Teams Sweep Championships in Softball, Soccer and Ultimate Frisbee!!

The UW Biostatics and Statistics Departments have a stronger connection than ever, and we have the awards to prove it! Athletic awards, that is. Three joint Biostat/Stat IMA teams played their hearts out this summer, winning championships in softball, soccer and ultimate Frisbee. Along with each championship comes a free T-shirt and a picture of the team on display at the IMA in the hallway in-between the men's and women's locker rooms.

Congratulations to the three victorious teams: ThunderStats (ultimate Frisbee) and Wardrobe Malfunction (softball), pictured below, and Random Charge (soccer)! Looks like ThurderStats had a secret weapon (left, first row, in pink).