I-BioStat Founders and Anniversary Symposium

2023 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Hasselt University, while also CenStat, L-BioStat, I-BioStat, the Master of Statistics and Data Science and its associated South program celebrate anniversaries.

To mark the occasion, a Symposium will be organized on May 26, 2023, the highlight of which will be Founders’ Prizes, for the first time all four founding fathers:

• Herman Callaert Leadership Award for Biostatistics Education and Dissemination - previously awarded to Alan Agresti (2004), Clarice G.B. Demétrio (2006), Norm Breslow (2008), Dave Harrington (2017) – will be given to Stephen Stigler (University of Chicago, Illinois), for his excellent work and communication about the history of statistics.
• Noël Veraverbeke Award for Excellence in Statistical Methodology - previously awarded to Paul Embrechts (2011) and Jan Swanepoel (2017) – will be given to Robert (Bob) Serfling (University of Texas), for his foundational work in mathematical statistics.
• Paul Janssen Award for Leadership in Statistical South Collaboration - previously awarded to Marleen Temmerman (2017) – will be given to Tarylee Reddy (South Africa MRC), for her important work to place Sub-Saharan statistics on the map.
• Emmanuel Lesaffre Award for Excellence in Biostatistics and Bioinformatics - previously awarded to John Hinde (2019) – will be given to John Edmunds, for his key work on infectious diseases.
  
  

WHEN?   May 26 2023

WHERE?  Hasselt University, Campus Diepenbeek, Building D, Lecture Hall H6, Belgium

Session I (Chair: Marc Aerts)

09:00 Registration and coffee
09:30 Welcome by Geert Molenberghs
09:35 Steve Stigler
Stories from the History of Causal Inference: A 360 Year-old Bestselling Book; The Costs of Overreaching; The Costs of Misdirection
10:35 Anneleen Verhasselt
Modeling survival data with two-piece distributions
10:50 Bob Serfling (recorded)
Some personal career notes

11:20 Coffee

Session II (Chair: Tomasz Burzykowski)

11:45 Ziv Shkedy
Modeling dose-response high dimensional data: methodology and software development
12:00 Tarylee Reddy
Statistical Modeling of COVID-19 data: placing bounds on uncertainty in an African epicentre
12:30 Thomas Neyens
Assessing trends in biodiversity using opportunistically sampled data
12:45 Ariel Alonso Abad
An information-theoretic approach for the evaluation of CoP based on causal inference

13:00 Lunch

Session III (Chair: Geert Verbeke)

13:45 John Hinde
Random effect models for grouped toxicological data
14:15 Christel Faes
Use of spatial statistics in digital pathology
14:30 John Edmunds
The use of modelling to inform COVID-19 policy in the UK
15:00 Steven Abrams
Survival analysis methods in infectious disease modelling

15:30 Coffee

Session IV (Chair: Niel Hens)

15:55 Herman Goossens
Monitoring van antibioticagebruik als essentieel beleidsinstrument
16:10 Philippe Beutels
A match made in Belgium: over 25 years of intensive interuniversity infectious disease research
16:25 Dirk Valkenborg
Quality Control for Quantitative Proteomics

16:40 short break

Academic session (Chair: Christel Faes)

16:50 start academic session
16:55 The Founders’ Prizes (Geert Molenberghs)
17:05 Rector Awards Founders Prizes

Steve Stigler (laudatio Olivier Thas)
Bob Serfling (laudatio Roel Braekers)
Tarylee Reddy (laudatio Geert Verbeke)
John Edmunds (laudatio Niel Hens)

17:30 Closure followed by reception

Registrations are free of charge but compulsory. 

Registrations are closed.

Deadline for registration is 19 May 2023.

The celebration will take place at Hasselt University, Campus Diepenbeek, Building D, Lecture Hall H6, Agoralaan, 3590 Diepenbeek, Belgium.