Good news!

Lily Wang has had a paper accepted for publication. The paper (“Integrating biological knowledge with gene expression profiles for survival prediction of cancer”) will be published in the February issue of Journal of Computational Biology.

Frank reviewed the biostatistics program at Northwestern University and reports that we are envied.

Frank attended the CTSA Biostatistics Epidemiology and Research Design meeting in DC last week and gave an update.

There were no objections to an "After-Hours" TWiki page for social events.

Seminars

Jonathan Schildcrout agreed to give a presentation at the January 5, 2009, department meeting. This will be a talk about his research, fashioned for non-statisticians.

Ben Saville will be taking over the job of organizing seminars starting next year. If you would like to give a seminar or you have general ideas about the series, please contact Ben.

There was discussion about using the Vanderbilt CME database to track continuing education for promotion. There was also discussion about giving CME credit for our department seminars and implementing a card swipe. There was general agreement that recording seminar, grand rounds, and workshop participation using a card swipe would be a good idea, and that giving CME credit for attendees at our seminars would draw more people. To register for CME credit, enter your information here: http://cme.vanderbilt.edu/registration.php.

Yaping Shi has a new CQI project that will provide an email summary each Monday morning of upcoming seminars and lectures. This information also will be displayed on the department calendar and TV. Later, we will determine which communication mode works best.

Online calendar

Bill Dupont will work with Dale to see whether our online calendar can be enhanced to support communications such as the above, or whether other systems include features worth having.

Space update

There was a strong vote for a single move to temporary space (on Blakemore Avenue). We will be there for 4 years and then return to the Life Sciences Engineering Building.

Recruiting

Chris Lindsell will visit Nashville with his wife in January.

Financial

The Dean has asked that we cut operating expenses by 3% and development expenses by 10% for the next 7 months.

Vanderbilt is in good financial shape compared with many other universities, but please avoid unnecessary expenses for the next 7 months.

Short course

Frank will give his Regression Modeling Strategies short course at the end of January. If you have not taken this course before, please register once we notify you of the registration process by email. The course is 5 days, 3 hours per day.

Books

Help make good use of the resources available to the department: before ordering a book, please check the library first! If you do order a book, please consider placing it in the department library after your use, to minimize charges against your career development allowance.

Poster contest

In total, 14 posters were submitted for the poster contest. Thanks to all those who submitted entries! The executive faculty committee judged the entries.

The winner will be announced on Friday at the department’s winter celebration.

Call for instructors

The Department of Biomedical Engineering is looking for a faculty statistician to teach course BME 260, an undergraduate course that will enroll about 35 students, primarily juniors and seniors. The course is slated to start this January, and the instructor will be paid. Please contact Frank if you are interested in this teaching opportunity.

Winter celebration

The department’s winter celebration and potluck lunch is this Friday at 11:30 AM in D-2221. Please sign up if you have not done so.