Past Meetings

2024 - Fort Collins, Colorado (joint with Graybill Conference)

Summary stats: June 9-12, 2024, N=435; 68 invited sessions (49 WNAR, 11 Graybill, 8 IMS), 8 contributed sessions, and 11 student paper sessions, 3 diversity workshops sessions

Presidential Invited Speaker: Robert L Santos, Director of the U.S. Census Bureau, “Serving Through Leadership: My Approach to Heading a Federal Statistical Agency”

Grabyill Keynote: Dr. Scott Evans, Professor at George Washington University, gave the Graybill Keynote “The order of operations is important: it is time to correct the clinical trial arithmetic.”

The theme of the Graybill Conference was “Rare Disease Drug Development.”

Program chairs: Prince Allotey (University of Washington), Catherine Lee (Kaiser Permanente)

IMS Program Chair: Jie Peng (UC Davis)

Local organizer: Wen Zhou (Colorado State University)

Graybill Program Chair: Jingling Ye (BeiGene)

Short courses: “N-of-1 Trials for Personalized Healthcare” presented by Christopher Schmid (Brown University), “Small Sample, Sequential, Multiple Assignment, Randomized Trial (snSMART) Designs and Methods for Chronic, Rare Disease Drug Development” presented by Kelley Kidwell (University of Michigan), and “Bayesian Borrowing Techniques for Rare Disease Clinical Research” presented by Joseph Koopmeiners and Steffen Ventz (University of Minnesota).

WNAR Diversity Workshop: The 2024 WNAR Diversity Workshop was the first satellite workshop held in conjunction with WNAR for underrepresented students, and it emphasized the importance of mentorship and belonging in the health and science fields as well as introduced various data-centered career pathways over two days. The workshop included a “Disparities in Epilepsy” research talk by Dr. Sonal Bhatia and a “Fireside Chat with Rob Santos” with the Director of the US Census Bureau. 16 students (8 undergraduate, 7 graduate) from the local area and 14 mentors from Colorado institutions participated. The organizing was led by the WNAR JEDI Committee and Leadership committee, especially Elizabeth Juarez-Colunga, Megan Othus, Jan Dasgupta, Natalie Gasca, Prince Allotey, Audrey Hendricks, and Lala Kaizer.

IBS/WNAR Outstanding Impact Award and Lectureship Recipient: Dr. Robert Tibshirani (Stanford)

WNAR Indigenous Student Travel Award Winner: Kyle Conniff (University of California Irvine)

Student Paper Award Winners: 42 students participated in the 2024 WNAR Student Award Competition. The winners of the Student Paper Award were Leah Andrews (University of Washington) “Semiparametric Methods for Evaluating COVID-19 Vaccine Regimens in Test-Negative Designs”, and Navneet Hakhu (University of California Irvine) “Censoring-Robust Estimation in Time-to-Event Clinical Trials with Adaptive Randomization”, and Robin Liu (University of California Santa Barbara) “Natural Covariate-adjusted Gaussian Graphical Regression.” The winner of the Student Presentation Award was Evan Sidrow (University of British Columbia), “Stochastic Optimization for Efficient Inference in Ecological Hidden Markov Models.”

Student Paper Chair: Kayleigh Keller (Colorado State University)

Student Paper Judges: Alejandra Benitez (Genentech), Shizhe Chen (University of California Davis), Juna Goo (Boise State University), Yawen Guan (Colorado State University), Ning Hao (University of Arizona), Yuan Jiang (Oregon State University), Alex Kaizer (Colorado School of Public Health), Matt Koslovsky (Colorado State University), Esra Kurum (University of California Riverside), Yiwen Liu (University of Arizona), Camille Moore (National Jewish Hospital), Tianyu Pan (Stanford University), Matteo Sesia (University of Southern California), Nicky Wakim (Oregon Health and Science University), Tianying Wang (Colorado State University), Yue Wang (Colorado School of Public Health), Brian Williamson (Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute),  Shangyuan Ye (Oregon Health and Science University), Fan Xia (University of California San Francisco)

Program links: WNAR 2024 program schedule can be viewed here (whova) and here (pdf).

2023 – Anchorage, Alaska (75th Anniversary)

Summary stats: June 18-21, 2023, N=356, 44 invited sessions, 5 student paper competition oral sessions, 3 contributed paper sessions, 2 Speed Talk Sessions, 7 IMS Sessions.

Presidential Invited Speaker: Dr. Kimberly Sellers from Georgetown University and US Census Bureau, "Dispersed Methods for Handling Dispersed Count Data"

Program chairs: Audrey Hendricks (CU Denver), Wen (Rick) Zhou (Colorado State University)

IMS Program chair: Hua Zhou (UCLA)

Local organizer: Jaiqi Huang (Alaska Dept of Fish & Game)

Program committee: Mengli Xiao, Jignshen Wang, Zhixin Lun, Jing Ma, Bo Huang

Short courses: "IT tools and best practices for statistical professionals" Instructor: Angelique Zeringue, PhD, Senior Consultant and Data Science Competency Lead, Daugherty Business Solutions;  "Real-World Evidence in Drug Development and Regulatory Decision-Making: Current Status, Challenges, and Opportunities" Instructor: Jie Chen, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer, Elixir Clinical Research

WNAR Student Representatives: Jen McNichol, Nikola Surjanovic, Riley Lamont

IBS/WNAR Outstanding Impact Award and Lectureship Recipient: Dr. Steve Horvath (Altos Labs, UCSD)

Student Paper Award Winners: The winners in the written category were: Soumik Purkayastha, University of Michigan, "Asymmetric Predictability: an information theoretic approach to causal inference" with runner up Norihiro Suzuki, Tokyo Medical University, "A new Criterion for Determining a Cutoff Value Based on the Biases of the Incidence Proportions in the Presence of Outcome Misclassifications". The winners in the oral category were: Michael Christensen, Duke University, "A Dynamic Model Characterizing Bird Migration", with runners up Elizabeth Wynn, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, "Simulating Longitudinal Single-cell RNA Sequencing Data",  Seth Temple, University of Washington, "Robust statistical inference for very recent and strong incomplete selective sweeps",  Soumik Purkayastha, University of Michigan, "Asymmetric Predictability: an information theoretic approach to causal inference"

Student Paper Chair: Charlotte Gard (New Mexico State University)

Student Paper Judges: Fang Chen (SAS); Shuai Chen (University of California, Davis); Chad He (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center); Alexander Kaizer (Colorado School of Public Health); Eric Kawaguchi (University of Southern California); Kayleigh Keller (Colorado State University); Jane Lange (Oregon Health & Science University); Hong Li (University of California, Davis); Yu-Ru Su (Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute); Brandie Wagner (Colorado School of Public Health); Brian Williamson (Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute); Katie Wilson (University of Washington); Shangyuan Ye (Oregon Health & Science University); Guo Yu (University of California, Santa Barbara); Qian Zhao (Stanford University)

Program links: WNAR 2023 program schedule can be viewed here.

2022 – virtual meeting due to COVID-19

Summary stats: June 13-15, 2022, N=245, 29 invited sessions, 9 student paper competition oral sessions, 5 contributed paper sessions.

Presidential Invited Speaker: Nicholas Jewell from UC Berkeley and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, "Biostatistics in Infectious Disease Research: Test-negative designs from Influenza, Dengue and Ebola to COVID-19"

Short courses: "Veridical Data Analysis" presented by Bin Yu and Rebecca Barter (UC Berkeley), and "Clinical Development of New Drugs" presented by Naitee Ting (Boehringer Ingelheim)

Program chair: Damla Senturk (UCLA)

Operations Committee:  Subodh Selukar (St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital; chair), Adam Elder (University of Washington), Kendrick Li (University of Michigan), Eric Morenz (University of Washington)

Student Paper Chair: Fan Yang (Univeristy of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus)

Student Paper Judges: Jarret Barber (Northern Arizona University), Fei Gao (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center), Kayleigh Keller (Colorado State University), John Rice (University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus), Subodh Slukar (St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital), Krithika Suresh (University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus), Katherine Wilson (University of Washington), Fan Xia (University of Washington),  Fuyong Xing (University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus), Ting Ye (University of Washington), Ying Zhou (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center)

IBS/WNAR Outstanding Impact Award and Lectureship Recipient: Dr. Bin Yu (UC Berkeley)

Student Paper Award Winners: The winners in the written category were: Anna Neufeld, University of Washington ("Inference after latent variable estimation for single-cell RNA sequencing data") and Shuting Shen, Harvard University ("Fast distributed Principal Component Analysis for large scale federated data"). The winners in the oral category were: Larry Han, Harvard University ("Privacy-preserving and communication-efficient causal inference for hospital quality measurement") and Tianyu Zhang, University of Washington, ("Regression in Tensor Product Spaces by the Method of Sieves").

Program links:

• WNAR 2022 program schedule can be viewed here.
• Abstracts for presentations can be viewed here.
• Agenda can now be viewed in WHOVA here.
• Access the speaker page here.

2021 – virtual meeting due to COVID-19

Summary stats: June 11-16, 2021, N=293, 28 invited sessions, 7 student paper competition oral sessions, 2 contributed paper sessions, 2 posters.

Presidential Invited Speaker: Rachel Fewster from University of Aukland: "How to Count the Things You Didn't See: The Magic and Mystery of Estimating Population Size"

Short courses: "Master Protocols: Tackling Complex Disease (and COVID-19!) with Bayesian Adaptive Platform Trials" presented by Ben Saville, Anna McGlothlin, and Christina Saunders; "RMST-based Survival Analysis Methods for Non-Promotional Hazards" presented by Lu Tian (Stanford University)

Program chair: Yingqi Zhao (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center) 

Operations Committee: Audrey Hendricks (Chair; University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus), Jennifer McNichol (University of New Brunswick), Lingling An (University of Arizona), Subodh Selukar (University of Washington) 

Student Paper Chair: Laura Saba (University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus) 

Student Paper Judges: Jarret Barber (Arizona State University), Cindy Feng (Dalhousie University), Camille Moore (National Jewish Health), Holly Steeves (University of Victoria), Mourad Tighiouart (Cedars-Sinai Medical Center), Julie Zhou (University of Victoria)

Student Paper Winners: The winners in the written category were Zitong Zhang, University of California Davis ("Learning Network Formation Patterns with Stochastic Block Models") and Kun Yue, University of Washington ("REHE: Fast Variance Components Estimation for. Linear Mixed Models") and Yige Li, Harvard University ("Effectiveness of Localized Lockdowns in the COVID-19 Pandemic"). The winner in the oral category was Yiqun Chen, University of Washington ("Quantifying Uncertainty in Spikes Estimated from Calcium Imaging Data").

Program links:

• WNAR 2021 program schedule can be viewed here.
• Program book can be viewed here, including abstracts for presentations. 
• Agenda can now be viewed in WHOVA here.
• Access the speaker page here.

2020 – in-person meeting canceled due to COVID-19

Student Paper Chair: Harold Bae (Oregon State University) 

Student Paper Judges: Jay Barber (Northern Arizona University), Fang Chen (SAS), Charlotte Gard (New Mexico University), Tusharkanti Ghosh (University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus), Jessica Minnier (Oregon Health Sciences University), Camille Moore (National Jewish Hospital), Debmalya Nandy (University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus), and Laura Saba (University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus) 

Student Paper Winners: The winners in the written category were Lingjing Jiang, University of California San Diego ("Assessing Reproducibility of Selected Features with Big Data") and Kwangho Kim, Carnegie Mellon University ("Causal Clustering:). The winner in the oral category was Jinyuan Liu, University of California San Diego ("Regression Models for within-subject Responses with between-subject Explanatory Variables: Applications to Microbiome Data").

2019 – Portland, Oregon

Summary stats: June 23-26, 2019, N=280, 24 WNAR invited sessions, 3 IMS invited sessions, 2 JR invited sessions, 2 invited panels, 8 student paper competition oral sessions, 5 contributed paper sessions, 20 posters.

Presidential Invited Speaker: Bin Yu from University of California Berkeley: “Three Principles of Data Science:  Predictability, Computability, and Stability ”
Short Courses: "Teaching Statistics and Data Science with R/RStudio" presented by Nicholas Horton (Amherst College) and Kelly McConville (Reed College); "Mediation Analysis and Software with Applications to Explore Health Disparties" presented by Qingzhao Yu and Bin Li (Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center); "A Gradual Introduction to Shiny" presented by Ted Laderas and Jessica Minnier (Oregon Health Sciences University).

Local Organizer: Byung Park (Oregon Health Sciences University)

WNAR Program Chair: Meike Niederhausent (Oregon Health Sciences University)

Student Paper Chair: Jessica Minnier (Oregon Health Sciences University)

Student Paper Judges: Harold Bae (Oregon State University), Lisa Brown (Seattle Genetics), Charlotte Gard (New Mexico State University), Chad He (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center), Ying Lu (Stanford University), Camille Moore (National Jewish Hospital), John Rice (University of Colorado Anschultz Medical Campus), Laura Saba (University of Colorado Anschultz Medical Campus), Krithika Suresh (University of Colorado Anschultz Medical Campus), Fan Yang (University of Colorado Anschultz Medical Campus), Wen Zhou (Colorado State University)

Student Paper Winners: The winner in the written category was Tiffany Tang, University of California Berkeley (“Integrated Principal Components Analysis “). There were three winners (tied) in the oral category: Natalie Gasca, University of Washington (“Using dimension-reduction methods to identify interpretable diet patterns related to body mass index (BMI) in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA)”), Evan Rosenman, Stanford University (“Propensity Score Methods for Merging Observational and Experimental Datasets”), and Justin Williams, University of California, Los Angeles (“Maximum Likelihood Estimation of a Truncated Normal Distribution with Censored Data”). 

Other: Meeting summary, Student paper competition summary, WNAR Regional meeting minutes

2018 – Edmonton, Alberta

Summary stats: June 25-28, 2018, N=100, 7 WNAR invited sessions, 6 student paper competition oral sessions, 1 IMS invited session, 3 contributed paper sessions.

Presidential Invited Speaker: Ross Prentice from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center: “A Marginal Modeling Approach to the Analysis of Multivariable Failure Time Regression Data”
Short Courses: “Statistical Challenges for Neuroimaging Data Analysis” presented by Linglong Kong from the University of Alberta and “Individual-level Transmission Process Modelling: Epidemics, Invasive Species and Beyond” presented by Rob Deardon from the University of Calgary. 

Local Organizer: Bei Jiang and Linglong Kong (University of Alberta)
WNAR Program Chair: Adam Kashlak (University of Alberta)

Student Paper Chair: Jessica Minnier (Oregon Health Sciences University)

Student Paper Judges: Harold Bae (Oregon State University), Charlotte Gard (New Mexico State University), Katerina Kechris (University of Colorado Anschultz Medical Campus), Miguel Marino (Oregon Health Science University), and Byung Park (Oregon Health Sciences University)

Student Paper Winners: The Most Outstanding Written Paper winners (tied) were Anu Mishra from the University of Washington for her paper “Weighted Recalibration for Improved Clinical Utility of Risk Scores” and Katherine Wilson from the University of Washington for her paper “Child Mortality Estimation Incorporating Birth History Data.” The Most Outstanding Oral Presentation winner was Phuong Vu from University of Washington for presentation “Probabilistic Predictive Principal Components Analysis for Spatially Misaligned and High-Dimensional Air Pollution Data with Missing Observations.” The Distinguished Oral Presentation winner was Kelsey Grinde from the University of Washington for her presentation “Controlling for Multiple Testing in Genome-Wide Admixture Mapping Studies.

Other: Meeting summary, Student paper competition summary, WNAR Regional meeting minutes

2017 – Santa Fe, New Mexico

Summary stats: June 25-28, 2017, N=175, 11 WNAR invited sessions, 2 student paper competition oral sessions, 3 IMS invited sessions, 9 contributed paper sessions, 1 poster session.

Presidential Invited Speaker: Javier Rojo from Oregon State University 
Short Courses: “Clinical Trials: How to create, organize and implement a clinical trial from a statistical perspective” presented by Tammy Massie from the National Institutes of Health and “Spatio-temporal dynamic statistical modeling in practice” presented by Mevin Hooten from Colorado State University, Trevor Hefley from Kansas State University, and Perry Williams from Colorado State University. 

Local Organizer: Cristina Murray-Krezan (University of New Mexico)
WNAR Program Chair: Charlotte Gard (New Mexico State University)

Student Paper Chair: Adam Branscom (Oregon State University)
Student Paper Judges: Kate Crespi (University of California Los Angeles), Ken Newman (United States Fish and Wildlife Service), and Chris Sokra (New Mexico State University)
Student Paper Winners: The Most Outstanding Written Paper winner was Jiachen Wu from University of Washington.  The Distinguished Written Paper winners were Qike Li from University of Arizona and Sai Li from Rutgers.  The Most Outstanding Oral Presentation winner was Brian Williamson from the University of Washington.  The Distinguished Written Paper winners were Linh Ngheim from Southern Methodist University and Matt Hingham from Oregon State University.

Other: Meeting summary, Student paper competition summary, WNAR Regional meeting minutes

2016 – Victoria, Canada (with International Biometrics Conference)

Summary stats: July 9-15, 2016, N=700+, 12 WNAR invited sessions, 3 student paper competition oral sessions, 17 IMS invited sessions, 40 contributed paper sessions, 2 poster sessions.
WNAR Program Chair: Layla Parast (RAND Corporation)
Student Paper Chair: Adam Branscom (Oregon State University)
Student Paper Judges: Tomi Mori (Oregon Health Sciences University), Andrea Cook (Group Health)
Student Paper Winners: The Most Outstanding Written Paper winner was Aaron Scheffler from University of California Los Angeles. The Distinguished Written Paper winner was Kayleigh Keller from University of Washington. The Most Outstanding Oral Presentation winner was Jonathan Fintzi from University of Washington. The Distinguished Oral Presentation winner was Peter DeWiit from University of Colorado Denver.
Other: Meeting Summary, WNAR Regional Meeting Minutes, Student Paper

2015 – Boise State University, Boise, ID

Summary stats: June 14-16, 2015, N=100+, 7 WNAR invited sessions, 6 IMS invited sessions, 3 student paper competition oral sessions, 3 contributed paper sessions, 1 poster session.
Presidential Invited Speaker: Sudipto Banerjee from University of California, Los Angeles: “Statistics for Space, Time and Big Data”
Short Course: “Modern Methods to Estimate Propensity Score Weights” by Dan McCaffrey and Matt Cefalu from the RAND Corporation
Local Arrangements: Kyungduk Ko
WNAR Program Chair: Layla Parast (RAND Corporation)
IMS Program Chair: Ronghui (Lily) Xu (University of California, San Diego)
Student Paper Chair: Sonya Heltshe (University of Washington)
Student Paper Judges: Tanya Garia (Texas A&M University), Candace Berrett (Brigham Young University), and Adam Branscom (Oregon State University)
Student Paper Winners: The Most Outstanding Written Paper winner was Andrew Spieker from University of Washington. The Distinguished Written Paper winners were Sheng Wu from University of Califonia, Los Angeles and Jim Faulkner from University of Washington. The Most Outstanding Oral Presentation winner was Andrew Spieker from University of Washington. The Distinguished Oral Presentation winners were Xu Shi from University of Washington and David Benkeser from University of Washington.
Other: Meeting Summary, WNAR Regional Meeting Minutes, Student Paper

2014 – University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI

Summary stats: June 15-18, 2014, N=180+, 12 WNAR invited sessions, 5 IMS invited sessions, 4 student paper competition oral sessions, 12 contributed paper sessions, 1 poster session with 20+ participants.
Presidential Invited Speaker: Christl Donnelly from Imperial College London: “Statistical Challenges in Understanding Disease Transmission and Control”
Short Course: “Introduction to large-scale genetic association studies” by Thomas Lumley from the University of Auckland and the University of Washington
Local Arrangements: Dongmei Li
Program Chair:
Student Paper Chair: Kathryn Prewitt (Arizona State University)
Student Paper Judges: Sonya Heltshe (Seattle Children’s Hospital), Christine McLaren (Unversity of California, Irvine), Brad Biggerstaff (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Student Paper Winners: The winner for the written paper was Mathew Conomos from University of Washingon. The runners-up for the written paper were Sepehr Aknavan Masouleh from the University of California, Irvine and Ashley Peterson from the University of Washington. The winner for the oral presentation was Jacob Konikoff from the University of California, Los Angeles. The runner-up for the oral presentation was Kean Ming Tan from University of Washington.
Other: Meeting Summary, WNAR Regional Meeting Minutes, Student Paper

2013 – UCLA, Los Angeles, California

Presidential Invited Speaker: John Chambers from Stanford University: “The Evolution of Two Paradigms in Statistical Software”
Short Course: “Fundamentals of Bayesian Analysis with Examples” by Bryan Manly from WEST, Inc
Student Paper Chair: Katie Kerr from the University of Washington
Student Paper Winners: The winner for the written paper was Masanao Yajima from University of California, Los Angeles. The runners-up for the written paper were Rebecca Yates Coley from the University of Washington and Steven Kim from the University of California, Irvine. The winner for the oral presentation was Rebecca Yates Coley from the University of Washington. The runner-up for the oral presentation was Adam King from University of California, Los Angeles.

2012 – Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado

Presidential Invited Speaker: Frank Harrell from Vanderbilt University, “Towards a More Rigorous Approach to Personalized Medicine:
Short Course: “Fundamentals of Bayesian Analysis with Examples” by Mike Patetta from the SAS Institute, Inc Haonan Wang, Colorado State University
Program Chairs: Elizabeth Brown from the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Mathias Drton from the University of Chicago
Student Paper Chair: Brandie Wagner from the University of Colorado
Student Award Winners: The winners for the written student paper were Jane Lange and Arend Voormar, both from the University of Washington and the runner-up was Peter Chi from the University of Washington. The winner for the oral presentation was Grant Weller from Colorado State University and the runner-up Gregory Imholte from the University of Washington.

2011 – California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California

Presidential Invited Speaker: Ron Brookmeyer, UCLA, “AIDS: Statistical Science and Public Health”
Short Course: Evaluation of Sequential and Adaptive Clinical Trial Designs by Scott Emerson from the University of Washington
Local Arrangements: Jimmy Doi from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
Program Chair: Wes Johnson from UC Irvine
Student Paper Chair: John Kittelson from University of Colorado Denver
Student Paper Winners: The winner for the written student paper was Elizabeth Juarez-Colunga from Simon Fraser University. The runner up for the written student paper was Karen McKeown from the University of California, Berkeley. There were two winners identified for the oral presentation: Farid Jamshidian from the University of California, Berkeley and Karen McKeown from the University of California, Berkeley. The runner-up for the oral presentation was Travis Loux from the University of California, Berkeley.

2010 – University of Washington, Seattle, Washington

Presidential Invited Speaker: Alicia Carriquiry, Iowa State University, “How are Women Faring at RI Universities? An Analysis of Two Recent National Surveys”
Short Course: Multiple Imputation and Survey Analysis in Stata 11, Bobby Gutierrez, Stata
Local Arrangements: Ying Qing Chen, SCHARP and Gary Chan, University of Washington
Program Chairs: Carolyn Rutter, Group Health Research Institute, and Brenda Kurland, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
Student Paper Chair: Sandra Catlin, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Student Paper Winners:  The winner for the best written student paper was Jennifer Tom from UCLA. The runner-up for the best written paper was Erik Bloomquist from the University of California. The winners of the best oral presentation were Siobhan Everson-Stewart from the University of Washington and Vinh Nguyen from the University of California, Irvine. The runner-up for the best oral presentation was Joseph Koopmeiners from the University of Washington.

2009 – Portland State University, Portland, Oregon

Presidential Invited Speaker: Peter Diggle (Lancaster University), “Geostatisticial Inference Under Preferential Sampling
Short Course: “Generalized Linear Models” by Charles McCulloch from University of California, San Francisco
Local Arrangements: Jong Sung Kim
WNAR Program Chair: Gang Li (University of California, Los Angeles)
IMS Program Chair: Hauyan Huang (University of Califonia, Berkeley)
Student Paper Chair: Sandra Catlin (University of Nevada)
Student Paper Winners: The winner for the best written student paper was Daniela Witten from Stanford University. The runner-ups for the best written papers were Gen Novak from Harvard School of Public Health and Charlotte Gard from the University of Washington. The winner of the best oral presentation was Jennifer Tom from UCLA. The runner-ups for the best oral presentations were Jacob Bien from Stanford University and Aasthaa Bansal from the University of Washington.

2008 – University of California, Davis, California

Presidential Invited Speaker: Peter Bartlett from the University of California, Berkeley gave a presentation on “Convex Methods for Pattern Classification”
Short Course: “R Survey Package Analyses for Two Phase Studies, with Applications in Epidemiology” by Thomas Lumley and Norm Breslow from the University of Washington. Jerry Lawless from the University of Waterloo gave a presentation entitled, “Making Sense of Life History Processes through Multi-State Models”.
Local Arrangements: Frank Samaniego and Chris Drake from UC Davis
Program Chair: Patrick Heagerty from the University of Washington (WNAR) and Charles Kooperberg from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (IMS)
Student Paper Chair: Laura Cowen
Student Paper Winners: Congratulations to Qunhua Li from the University of Washington for winning the 2008 WNAR Best Student Paper Competition for his paper entitled “A Nested Mixture Model for Protein Identification using Mass Spectrometry” and to Luke Bornn from the University of British Columbia for winning the 2008 WNAR Best Oral Presentation for his talk entitled “An Efficient Computational Approach for Prior Sensitivity Analysis and Cross-Validation.” Congratulations also to Kumar Rajan from the University of Washington, the runner-up for the written paper. Congratulations also to Qunhua Li from the University of Washington, Kumar Rajan from the University of Washington and Adam Boyd from the University of Denver, the runner-ups for the oral presentation. The students received their award at the conference banquet.

2007 – University of California, Irvine, California

Presidential Invited Speaker: Terry Speed from UC Berkley “Statistics and Computational Biology”
Short Course: “Causal Inference in Experimental and Observational Studies” by Don Rubin from Harvard University.
Local Arrangements: Dan Gillen from UC Irvine
Program Chair: Todd Alonzo from University of Southern California (WNAR) and Thomas Richardson from the University of Washington (IMS)
Student Paper Chair: Raphael Gottardo
Student Paper Winners: Congratulations to Rebecca Hubbard from the University of Washington for winning the 2007 WNAR Best Student Paper Competition and Best Oral Presentation for her paper and talk entitled “Modeling Delirium Progression Using a Non-homogeneous Markov Process.” Congratulations also to the runner ups for the written paper Brandie Wagner from the University of Colorado and Kyle Rudser from the University of Washington. Congratulations also to the runner ups for the oral presentation Hua Zhong from the University of Washington and Sonya Heltshe from the University of Colorado.

2006 – Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona

Presidential Invited Speaker: Xiao-Li Meng of Harvard University, “(Data) Size Does Matter, But You Might be in for a Surprise…”.
Short Course: “Statistical Methods for Analysis of Missing Data” by XH Andrew Zhou of the University of Washington.
Local Arrangements: Roy St. Laurent, Northern Arizona University
Program Chair: Ying Lu (WNAR), Wolfgang Polonik (IMS)
Student Paper Chair: Sarah Michalak of Northern Arizona University.
Student Paper Winners: Leslie Taylor from the University of Washington for winning the 2006 WNAR Best Student Paper Competition and Best Student Oral Presentation for her paper and talk entitled “Multiple Imputation Methods for Treatment Noncompliance and Missing Data.” Congratulations also go out to the runner-up Jeff Lingwall from BYU.

2005 – University of Fairbanks, Fairbanks, Alaska

Presidential Invited Speaker: Donald Rubin of Harvard University, “The Design (Versus Analysis) of Observational Studies”.
Short Course: “Bayesian Clinical Trials,” by Scott Berry of Berry Consultants, and “Active Set Adaptive Sampling,” by Steve Thompson of Pennsylvania State University and Simon Fraser University.
Local Arrangements: Dana Thomas, University of Alaska-Fairbanks
Program Chair: Gilbert Fellingham (WNAR), Thomas Lee (IMS)
Student Paper Chair: Mike Fugate from Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Student Paper Winners: Nema Dean from the University of Washington for winning the 2005 WNAR Best Student Paper Competition for her paper, “Normal Uniform Mixture Differential Gene Expression Detection for cDNA Microarrays.” Congratulations to Laura Cowen from Simon Fraser University on winning the Best Student Oral Presentation Award for her talk entitled, “The Jolly-Seber Model with Tag Loss.” Congratulations also go out to runners-up for Best Oral Presentation Garrett Hellenthal from University of Washington and Megan Dailey from Colorado State University.

2004 – University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Presidential Invited Speaker: Donald A. Berry from University of Texas, “Why Bayes? Innovations in Clinical Trial Design and Analysis”
Short Course: “Hierarchical Modeling and Analysis of Spatial Data,” by Bradley Carlin from the University of Minnesota.
Local Arrangements: Ed Bedrick, Gabriel Huerta
Program Chair: David Higdon (WNAR), Jason Fine (IMS)
Student Paper Committee: C. Shane Reese from Bigham Young University (Chair), Margaret Short from Los Alamos National Laboratories and, Jeff Morris from MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Student Paper Winners: Raphael Gottardo of the University of Washington, Winner, 2004 WNAR Best Student Paper Award for his paper, “Robust estimation of cDNA microarray intensities with replicates.” James H. Degnan of the University of Mexico, Winner, 2004 Best Student Oral Presentation Award for his talk entitled, “Gene tree distributions under the coalescent process.” Congratulations also to first runner-up Lihong Qi from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington and Chuan Zhou from the University of Washington in the Best Student Paper Competition.

2003 – Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado (N=123)

Presidential Invited Speaker: Heike Hofmann from Iowa State University, “Graphics: An Ace in the Sleeve of a Statistician”
Short Course: “Pattern-Mixture and Selection Models Demystified,” by Diane L. Fairclough from University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.
Local Arrangements: Jim Murphy, Bill Navidi, Gary Zerbe
Program Chair: Snehalata Huzurbazar (WNAR), Naisyin Wang (IMS)
Student Paper Committee: David Higdon from Los Alamos National Laboratory (Chair), .Misoo Ellison from National Jewish Center, John Neuhaus from USCF
Student Paper Winners: Daniel Gillen of the University of Washington, Winner, 2003 WNAR Best Student Paper Award and Best Student Oral Presentation Award. Congratulations also to first runner-up Jiang Qi from Merck, Inc. in New Jersey , second runners-up Timothy Webb from University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Zonghui Hu from Texas A&M University and honorable mention papers by: Kent Kaprowicz from University of Washington, A. R. deLeon, and A. Liu from University of California, Santa Barbara

2002 – UCLA, Los Angeles, California

Presidential Invited Speaker: Michael Newton, University of Wisconsin, Madison, “Statistical methods to analyze genomic aberrations in cancer cells”
Short Course: “Molecular Phylogeny: Statistical Methods for Reconstructing and Interpreting Evolutionary Histories”, by Kenneth Lange1, Eric Schadt2, Janet S. Sinsheimer3, and Marc Suchard4. Departments of Biomathematics{1,3,4} and Human Genetics{1,3}, UCLA School of Medicine, and Computational Genomics2, Rosetta Inpharmatics
Local Arrangements: John Boscardin
Program Chair: Weng Kee Wong (WNAR), Michael Kosorok (IMS)
Student Paper Committee: John Neuhaus, University of California San Francisco (chair), Ed Bedrick, University of New Mexico, Chris Williams, University of Idaho.
Student Paper Winners: Grace Chiu (1st); Rachel MacKay (2nd); Xiao Yan Leng, UC Davis (3rd)

2001 – Simon Fraser University, British Columbia

Presidential Invited Speaker: Noel Cressie, Ohio State University “A Bird’s Eye View of Earth and It’s Atmosphere.”
Short Course: Elizabeth Thompson, University of Washington, “Inference from Genetic Data on Pedigrees.”
Local Arrangements: Tim Swartz.
Program Chair: Mary Lesperance.
Student Paper Committee: Laura Salter (Chair), Ed Bedrick.
Student Paper Winners: To be Announced.

2000 – University of California, Berkeley, California (N=722)

Presidential Invited Speaker: Ross L. Prentice “Biostatistics and Chronic Disease Prevention Research”
Short Course: Kyung-Yee Liang & Scott Zeger “Analysis of Data from Longitudinal Studies–Current Topics”; Clarice Demetrio & John Hinde “Overdispersion: Models and Estimation”; Chris Jennison, Bruce Turnbull, & Cyrus Mehta “Group Sequentional Design and Interim Monitoring of Clinical Trial Data: Statistical Methodology and Computation”
Local Arrangements: Joan Hilton (Chair), Lynn Ackerson, Stuart Gansky, Lauren Gee, Kevin Delucchi, David Giltinan, Nicholas Jewell, Sue Service
Program Chair: Sylvia Richardson (Invited Program), Laura Lazzeroni (Contributed Program), Snehalata Huzurbazar (WNAR-IBC Liaison)

1999 – University of Washington, Seattle, Washington

Presidential Invited Speaker: Rob Tibshirani, Stanford University, “Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks: Some Old Statistical Tools Applied to Modern Genetics”
Short Course: Dianne Cook, Iowa State University, Deborah Swane and Adreas Buja, AT&T Labs, “Data Mining with the Right Side of the Brain: Interactive Dynamic Graphics for Data Analysis”
Local Arrangements: Martin McIntosh
Program Chair: Charmaine Dean
Student Paper Committee: Patrick Heagert

1998 – University of California at San Diego, California

Presidential Invited Speaker: Robert Elston, Professor of Genetic and Molecular Epidemiology, Case Western Reserve University, “Fieller’s theorem and locating genes”
Short Course: Guy Nason and Bernard Silverman, University of Bristol, UK, “Everything Applied Statisticians Want to Know about Wavelets but are Afraid to Ask Instructors”
Local Arrangements: Don Slymen
Program Chair: Jeremy Taylor
Student Paper Committee: Chris Williams (Chair), Robert Fusaro, Lianne Sheppard
Student Paper Winners: Nilanjan Chatterjee, Dongliang Zhuang, Thomas Braun

1997 – Utah State University, Park City, Utah

Presidential Invited Speaker: Nan Laird, Harvard University, “Model-Based Methods for the Simultaneous Analysis of Repeated Measures and a Failure Time Variable”
Short Course: Ludwig Fahrmeir, University of Munich, and Garrett Fitzmaurice, Harvard University, “Categorical and Correlated Data Analysis”
Local Arrangements: J.L. Madrigal
Program Chair: William Navidi
Student Paper Committee: Robert Fusaro (chair), Wendy Leisenring, Sam MaWhinney, Mary Sara McPeek
Student Paper Winners: Michal Kulich (written, 1st place), Thomas Lumley (oral, tie for 1st), Susan K. Mikulich (oral, tie for 1st), and Wei Zhu (written, 2nd place)

1996 – Washington State University, Pullman, Washington (N=125)

Themes: Model Selection & Statistical Consulting
Presidential Invited Speaker: John A. Nelder, Imperial College, London, “Statistics and the Experimental Cycle”
Short Course: Marie Davidian & David Giltinan, “Nonlinear models for repeated measurement data”
Local Arrangements: Marc Evans
Program Chair: LuAnn Johnson
Student Paper Committee: Jeffrey Wilson (chair), Lynn Ackerson, John Carlow, Mark Reiser, David Smith
Student Paper Winners: Ben Lyons, Adam Olshen, Karim N. Rajwani

1995 – Stanford University, California (N=161)

Themes: Genetics & Biologic Populations
Presidential Invited Speaker: Lynne Billard, University of Georgia, President of International Biometric Society, “Modelling and Inference in Plant Disease Spread”
Short Course: Robert Elston, Daniel Schaid
“Statistical Methods for Genetic Epidemiology”
Local Arrangements: Dan Bloch
Program Chair: Joan Hilton
Student Paper Committee: Dan Schafer (chair), Ian Abramson, Marc Evans, Mark Segal
Student Paper Winners: Brian Steele, Ranjan Maitra, Charles Spiekerman

1994 – University of California, Los Angeles, California (N=181)

Theme: Statistics and Health Research
Presidential Invited Speaker: Terry Speed, University of California, Berkeley, “Statistical Problems in the Study of Molecular Evolution”
Local Arrangements: Tom Belin
Program Chair: Nat Schenker
Student Paper Committee: Ian Abramson (chair); competition canceled

1993 – University of Wyoming (N=177)

Theme: Statistics in the Environment and Public Policy
Presidential Invited Speaker: Yashiswami Mittal, University of Arizona, “Models, Amalgamation and Paradoxes in 2×2 Contingency Tables”
Short Course: Lyman McDonald, “Environmetrics”
Local Arrangements: Bob Cochran
Program Chair: Hari Iyer
Student Paper Committee: Madeline Bauer, Duane Boes, Frank Graybill, Elbert Walker
Student Paper Winners: Mark Ashby, Brad Biggerstaff, Robert Neuman

1992 – Oregon State University (N=236)

Theme: Longitudinal data
Presidential Invited Speaker: Ron Brookmeyer, Johns Hopkins University, “A Statistical History of the AIDS Epidemic”
Short Course: Richard Jones, “Longitudinal data”
Local Arrangements: Cliff Pereira
Program Chair: Gary Zerbe
Student Paper Committee: Elizabeth Thompson (chair), John Neuhaus, Dan Schafer
Student Paper Winners: Jim Hughes

1991 – University of California, Santa Barbara, California (N=150)

Theme: Generalized Estimating Equations
Presidential Invited Speaker: John D. Kalbfleish, University of Waterloo, “Mixture Models and Profile Likelihoods”
Short Course: Kung-Yee Liang, Scott Zeger, “Generalized Estimating Equations”
Local Arrangements: Joe Gani
Program Chair: John Neuhaus
Student Paper Committee: William Redfearn, Jeremy Taylor, Gary Zerbe
Student Paper Winners: Kevin Anderson, Guillermo Marshall, and Yongxiao Wang

1990 – Montana State University

Presidential Invited Speaker: Woollcott Smith, Temple University, “Impact Assessment for Oil Spills and Other Accidents”
Local Arrangements: Martin Hamilton & Ken Tiahrt
Program Chair: Tony Olshen
Student Paper Committee: Barbara McKnight, Leigh Murray, Elizabeth Thompson
Student Paper Winners: Marc Evans

1989 – University of California, Davis, California (N=189)

Presidential Invited Speaker: Ethel Gilbert, Battelle Northwest, “Assessing Risks from Occupational Exposure to Low-level Radiation: The Statistician’s Role”
Local Arrangements: Jessica Utts & Francisco Samaniego
Program Chair: Madeline Bauer
Student Paper Committee: Sondra Perdue, Kirk Steinhorst, Gary Zerbe
Student Paper Winners: Lynn Ackerson