The third biennial Nonclinical Biostatistics Conference will be hosted by Villanova University in Villanova, Pennsylvania, from October 15–17. The conference was created to provide a venue for technical presentations, professional growth, and recognition for those statisticians engaged in nonclinical statistics. The theme of the conference is “Nonclinical Statistics: Improving Pharmaceutical Discovery, Development, and Manufacturing.”
Students are especially encouraged to participate in conference activities. To help financially, limited scholarships are available to students, with preference given to those who present posters. The best student poster, as judged by a committee, will receive a special award of $250. Students interested in applying for scholarships should visit the website for information.
The website is open for abstract submissions by prospective presenters of both oral presentations and posters. Abstracts must be submitted by June 10. Details about cost and housing are available on the website.
For additional information, contact Paul Lupinacci at info@NCB2013.org.
I hold a Higher National Diploma (HND) in Health Information Management and Biostatistics from Obafemi Awolowo Univerity Teaching Hospital College (OAUTHC) in Nigeria. Please kindly link me up with a university in Europe or North America where I can undertake a direct entry bachelor degree program in Biostatistics
Hello Mary:
From time to time, I see “top 10” lists, and these lists can be a good way to begin your exploration for a program that is a good fit for you and your academic/career goals. There may be other lists by other organizations. I list the following site as a starting point only:
http://education-portal.com/articles/Best_Biostatistics_Universities_List_of_Top_Schools.html. I suspect you can use a search engine to find a similar list for programs in Europe, or a particular country in Europe.
Before you reviewing degree programs, create a spreadsheet of the top 10-20 characteristics that you want in your program and university. For example, some characteristics related to a degree program might be whether the program offers an appealing specialization within biostatistics, requires/offers a senior project, and offers graduate degrees. Location, affordable housing, transportation around the university, etc. are examples of university characteristics. You might also want to gather statistics on how successful the department or university is in helping undergraduates find summer internships and/or jobs or provide other kinds of support. List those characteristics in Column A. Across the top of the spreadsheet list some biostatistics programs.
Another factor to consider is where you want to live/work after you get a bachelor’s degree. I was advised by a professor to get a degree in the same country that I was planning to work because he thought that U.S. employers would hire people who have degrees from universities with which they are familiar. While it seemed appealing to me study outside of the U.S., I knew that I would work in the U.S., so I followed his advice. If you don’t know where you might like to live/work after graduation, then it might be important to attend an internationally-recognized European or U.S. university, and thus, you would add ranking to your characteristics in Column A.
Once you have your matrix of characteristics by universities, begin to read about each biostatistics program. Identify which programs/universities have the characteristics that are important to you by placing an “X” in the appropriate cell of the spreadsheet. Interestingly, by reading about different programs in Europe and the U.S., you may identify an important characteristic that is not yet on your list, so you can just add it to Column A. This process will help you find a program that is a good fit for your interests.
Please let me know if you have additional questions.
Monica Johnston
Member of the ASA Committee on Career Development