Applications Invited for Byar Young Investigator Award, Travel Awards

Are you planning to submit an abstract for the 2012 Joint Statistical Meetings? If so, you should know the ASA Biometrics Section is seeking applications for the 2012 David P. Byar Young Investigator Award. This award is given to a young investigator for best emerging work to be presented at the JSM. The award commemorates the late David Byar, a biostatistician who made significant contributions to the development and application of statistical methods and was esteemed as an exceptional mentor during his career at the National Cancer Institute. The winner will receive a $1,500 cash award.

2011 Byar Young Investigator Award Winner
Daniela Witten
University of Washington
“Penalized Classification using Fisher’s Linear Discriminant”
2011 Travel Award Winners
Genevera Allen
Rice University
“A Generalized Least Squares Matrix Decomposition”
Qunhua Li
University of California at Berkeley
“Measuring Reproducibility of High-Throughput Experiments”
Jessica Minnier
Harvard University
“Risk Classification with an Adaptive Naïve Bayes Kernel Machine Model”
Layla Parast
Harvard University
“Landmark Prediction of Long Term Survival Incorporating Short Term Event Time Information”
Sihai Dave Zhao
Harvard University
“Grouped Variable Selection via Hierarchical Models”
Congratulations to the award winners on their notable accomplishments!

In addition to the Byar Award, the section may provide travel awards to the authors of other outstanding papers that are submitted to the competition.

Applicants must meet the following criteria:

  • Have held a doctorate in statistics, biostatistics or a related quantitative field for three years or less as of April 1 of the current year, or be currently enrolled as a student in a doctoral program in statistics or biostatistics and in active pursuit of a doctoral degree.
    • Be a current member of the Biometrics Section (applicant may join at the time of submission for a $5 annual membership fee [$3 for students]). Please note that membership in ASA does not automatically confer section membership; ASA members must join individual sections in addition to their generic membership.
      • Be first author of the paper. The paper may be unsubmitted, submitted or under review, but may not have already appeared in a journal either on-line or in print at the time of the application or have been accepted for publication as of December 15 of 2011.
        • Be scheduled to present the same paper submitted for the Award at the 2012 Joint Statistical Meetings in San Diego, CA as either a talk or poster.
          • Not have submitted the paper to any other ASA section 2012 student/young investigator award competition.
            • Applicants must submit their JSM abstracts to the Biometrics Section, which will organize a series of Topic Contributed sessions to highlight the Byar award and travel awards winners.

              Applicants should complete their application by submitting the following materials:

            • A cover letter certifying that the applicant meets the eligibility requirements and is not submitting the paper to any other ASA section student/young investigator award competition.
              • A current CV.
                • One copy of the finished paper.
                  • All materials must be submitted electronically on or before December 15, 2011. Applications and questions should be sent to J. Jack Lee at jjlee@mdanderson.org.

                    The 2012 Awards Committee is composed of the 2012 current and past section chairs and chair-elect as well as three additional individuals to be appointed by the section chairs prior to the competition.

                    For the 2012 competition, the finalists of Byar Awards will be announced one week prior to the JSM abstract deadline on Feburary 1, 2012. Finalists should email the section JSM Program Chair, Timothy D. Johnson at tdjtdj@umich.edu and submit a Topic–Contributed abstract to the JSM.

                    Information regarding this award is also available on the section webpage.

                    This version corrects the original, which stated the deadline as January 1, 2012. The deadline is December 15, 2011.