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Biostatistics and Medical Informatics Professor Rick Chappell has been named the 2015 AbbVie Statistics Visiting Scholar. In this role, Dr. Chappell will spend considerable time over the coming year in-house collaborating with AbbVie statisticians and other biopharmaceutical scientists on problems related to statistical design and analytical methodology needed to fully exploit information collected from AbbVie clinical trials. Whereas the primary focus will be on the design and analysis of AbbVie trials, from concept through analysis and reporting, Rick may also conduct seminars, engage in training and mentoring activities, and/or participate in the design of protocols or charter templates for novel types of clinical trials or other research. AbbVie (www.abbvie.com) is a global, research-based biopharmaceutical company situated in North Chicago.

Randomized, double-blind clinical trials are widely considered the gold standard for establishing causal relationships between interventions and outcomes of interest. However, the importance of randomization and the intention-to-treat (ITT) principle in the design, conduct, and analysis of such trials — while widely recognized — is often not well understood. In this first-time SCT workshop, Cook and colleagues used easily understood models and examples, accessible to a non-mathematical audience, to demonstrate why randomization and ITT analysis lead directly to valid assessments of whether a new treatment “works”.

Despite some initial skepticism on the part of the Society's Education Committee, the workshop was very well received and sported the second highest attendance at the meeting. The presenters are planning to extend it to a longer morning workshop for next year's meeting.

The Society for Clinical Trials is an international professional organization dedicated to the development and dissemination of knowledge about the best practice in design, conduct, analysis and reporting of clinical trials with membership from government, academia, industry and non-profit organizations.

Congratulations are in order to Associate Professor Menggang Yu for his imminent funding award from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) for his project entitled "Matching Complex Patients to Treatments: Innovative Statistical Scoring Methods for Treatment Selection". The project, which will run for 3 years, aims to develop and disseminate innovative statistical methods to rank possible treatments for patients according to their likelihood of achieving desirable patient outcomes. The ranking will be based on patient characteristics such as demographics and socio-economic variables, inpatient/outpatient diagnoses, comorbidity, pharmacy claims, health system and clinic information.

The award is one of four or five PCORI awards received recently by investigators at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, and highlights the Department’s commitment to health services research.

The study is one of 46 proposals that PCORI approved for funding on Tuesday, April 21, to advance the field of comparative clinical effectiveness research (CER) and provide patients, healthcare providers, and other clinical decision makers with information that will help them make better-informed choices.
The award has been approved pending completion of a business and programmatic review by PCORI staff and issuance of a formal award contract to the University.

“This project was selected for PCORI funding not only for its scientific merit and commitment to engaging patients and other stakeholders, but also for its potential to fill an important gap in our health knowledge and give people information to help them weigh the effectiveness of their care options,” said PCORI Executive Director Joe Selby, MD, MPH. “We look forward to following the study’s progress and working with the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health to share the results.”

Professor Yu’s study and the other projects approved for PCORI funding were selected through a highly competitive review process in which patients, clinicians, and other stakeholders joined clinical scientists to evaluate the proposals. Applications were assessed for scientific merit, how well they will engage patients and other stakeholders, and their methodological rigor among other criteria.

PCORI is an independent, non-profit organization authorized by Congress in 2010 to fund comparative clinical effectiveness research that will provide patients, their caregivers, and clinicians with the evidence-based information needed to make better-informed health and healthcare decisions. PCORI is committed to seeking input from a broad range of stakeholders to guide its work.

PCORI has approved $854 million to support 399 research studies and initiatives since it began funding research in 2012. For more information about PCORI funding, visit http://pcori.org.

KyungMann Kim, Ph.D., Professor of Biostatistics and Statistics, Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics, School of Medicine and Public Health, was recently elected as Vice President for 2015-2016 for the International Society for Clinical Biostatistics and will serve as President during 2017-2018 and Past President in 2019.

The International Society for Clinical Biostatistics (http://www.iscb.info) is an international organization founded in 1978 to stimulate research into the principles and methodology used in the design and analysis of clinical research studies and to increase the relevance of statistical methods and theory to the real world of clinical medicine. The primary activity of the Society is to organize an annual conference. This year’s annual conference, known as ISCB36 to mark the 36th annual conference of the Society, will be held in Utrecht, the Netherlands during August 23-27, 2015 (http://www.iscb2015.info).

BMI Asst. Prof. Sushmita Roy is part of a diverse new team of UW-Madison researchers who received $6 million from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to develop models and screening tools that will rapidly advance knowledge of the health effects of today's ever-growing assortment of environmental toxins. Awarded through the EPA Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program, the grant will create the Human Models for Analysis of Pathways (H-MAPs) Center at UW-Madison. See more: http://www.news.wisc.edu/23596

Congratulations to biostatistics PhD student Keegan Korthauer for garnering an ENAR RAB Poster Award at the recent meetings of the Eastern North American Region of the International Biometric Society in Miami, Florida. Keegan's poster is entitled "Differential dynamics in single-cell RNA-seq experiments", research conducted under the direction of BMI Professor Christina Kendziorski.

BMI Senior Scientist Thomas Cook has been selected to receive the 2015 Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Research as an Independent Investigator! He was one of nine honorees to receive an Academic Staff Excellence Award.
This designation is awarded to Tom for his deep and broad contributions to the conduct and analysis of clinical trials, both in applications and methodology development.

Tom has satisfied all of the Award criteria: "Outstanding achievement and performance by the candidate, [who] consistently and substantially exceeds the expectations of the position; has made important and significant contributions to the departmental unit; has furthered the mission of the university; and has become a distinguished member of his/her profession campus-wide, system wide, nationally, or internationally".
BMI Distinguished Scientist Marian Fisher spearheaded Tom's nomination and worked diligently to complete it with great attention to the details!

Professor David Page has been awarded a Kellett Mid-Career Faculty Researcher Award for the period starting in July 2015 through June of 2020. This is a wonderful recognition by the University of David's broad and deep contributions to the research enterprise across the UW campus and beyond. The award recognizes his academic success and provides an opportunity for continued development of his outstanding research program.

The fellowship is named in honor of William R. Kellett, a WARF Trustee and President of the WARF board. A Wisconsin native, graduate of the College of Engineering and an enthusiastic supporter of the University, Kellett held an abiding commitment to the reform and progress of Wisconsin’s educational institutions.

Congratulations to our Bioinformatics faculty for making the Bioinformatics top 10 list of most highly cited papers of 2014:EBSeq: an empirical Bayes hierarchical model for inference in RNA-seq experiments.
The abstract, summary and full text are available on the Journal's website:http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/reports/most-cited

Congratulations to Professor David Page who has been named a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor. This appointment was made by Provost Sarah Mangelsdorf after a nomination by Dean Robert Golden. Provost Mangelsdort, Dean Golden and Dean Moss were instrumental in providing approval and support for this appointment.

The Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professorships recognize professors whose distinguished scholarship has advanced the confines of knowledge, and whose excellence has also included teaching or service. The professorship provides a fixed allocation of flexible funds to be used by David over the next five years. David will carry the title of Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor for the duration of his career at UW-Madison.