GOOD NEWS
A paper by Chun Li and Bryan Shepherd appears in the June 2010 issue of the Journal of the American Statistical Association (“Test of association between two ordinal variables while adjusting for covariates”).
Ming Li’s “Comparative shotgun proteomics using spectral count data and quasi-likelihood modeling” has been accepted for publication by the Journal of Proteome Research.
Cindy Chen’s R21 grant has received an exceptional score of 10, the best possible score.
Ayumi is set to take an ongoing collaboration with Wes Ely, professor, Health Services Research, to a new stage. Wes’s R01 grant application was recently ranked in the first percentile! The project is a three-arm RCT for the efficacy of antipsychotics in reducing delirium in the ICU.
Our department’s collaboration has helped Sports Medicine secure their first grant ever — and its renewal application received an excellent score.
Linda plans to return to her home the weekend of July 10-11. Robert’s home, also badly damaged in the flood, has finally received approval for repairs; re-building will begin soon. Many thanks again to all department members who have helped with the post-flood cleaning and re-building.
PEOPLE
On August 1st, David Ashfartous, PhD, will join the department as research associate professor. Addendum: The date has been moved to September 1st.
Sarah Fletcher joined the department as biostatistician I on June 21 and is working primarily with Jeffrey Blume.
An all-department meeting was scheduled for Tuesday, July 13, from 2-3 PM, in MRB III, room 1220. Chris Fonnesbeck gave a talk.
Faculty candidate Wenyi Wang did not accept our offer, so the cancer division tenure-track faculty position remains open.
SERVICE
The Partners in Health campaign proved to be quite successful for Biostatistics, with 75% participation among our faculty — a significantly higher rate than the school’s 45-50% average participation for faculty.
QUALITY
The department announced a new policy requiring a department faculty member with more than 5% effort on a project be automatically considered a co-investigator, as opposed to “biostatistician” or other role. Everyone agreed that the policy change is a positive one. Efforts smaller than 5% will be directed to the BCC.
The Biostatistics Collaboration Center (BCC) is now up and running. Please be patient as the BCC works to regularize its operations. Faculty and staff feedback is encouraged. Faculty members should work closely with their collaborators in arranging the timeline upon which their involvement is required. Faculty members should contact the BCC as soon as they know BCC services may be required (contact either Jeffrey Blume or Seth Martin). Jeffrey and Seth will work with faculty to determine the budget and communicate that information to the appropriate grants personnel in other departments. The BCC requires a minimum of two weeks’ notice before a grant is due.
Investigators using the VICTR voucher system will have to pay half of the BCC charges after the initial $2,000 is exhausted. All statistical collaborations on vouchers will now be handled through the BCC on an hourly basis.
Reminder: Faculty and staff members are expected to participate regularly in daily clinic.
The department is still waiting to hear from medical school leadership regarding our FY2011 budget. Addendum: The department has received FANTASTIC news that the FY11 base allocation (operating) budget has been adjusted upward and is a much more appropriate base. The Academic Program Support (APS) budget is very attractive and allows the department to continue its rapid recruitment plan of new faculty.
INNOVATION
Dean Balser has asked each department chair to write department-specific pillars, modeled after the university pillars. Dr. Balser has also invited department leaders to submit their “dreams for the coming year.” Biostatistics’ goals include implementation of our graduate program and becoming a more integrated part of personalized medicine research at Vanderbilt.
Frank Harrell has joined the SOM faculty appointment and promotion committee as Bill Dupont steps down.
Best regards,
CQI Communications Team
Frank Harrell, Yu Shyr, Dan Byrne, Linda Stewart, Tatsuki Koyama, and Lynne Berry -- JohnBock - 01 Apr 2011 <!-- * Set ALLOWTOPICCHANGE = BiostatUsersGroup * Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW = BiostatUsersGroup -->
CQI Communications Team
Frank Harrell, Yu Shyr, Dan Byrne, Linda Stewart, Tatsuki Koyama, and Lynne Berry -- JohnBock - 01 Apr 2011 <!-- * Set ALLOWTOPICCHANGE = BiostatUsersGroup * Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW = BiostatUsersGroup -->
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