Qike Li's Conference Summary

     Qike Li
     Ph.D. Student
     Statistics GIDP

     Conference Summary
     2017 Joint Statistical Meetings
     Baltimore, Maryland

The H.E. Carter Travel Award provided me the opportunity to attend the 2017 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) in Baltimore. JSM is one of the largest statistical events in the world. It is the major annual conference for professional statisticians and data scientists. It is also one of the broadest, with topics ranging from statistical applications to methodology and theory to the expanding boundaries of statistics, such as analytics and data science. JSM 2017 offered a unique opportunity for statisticians in academia, industry, and government to exchange ideas and explore opportunities for collaboration. JSM attracted over 6000 participants from 52 countries, making for a diverse and rich networking opportunity. Most exciting for my particular area of research, JSM featured invited talks on precision medicine from top statisticians around the world, such as Michael Kosorok (University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill), Hongyu Zhao (Yale), Rafael Irizarry (Harvard), etc.

I submitted a manuscript and presented my research in the session of personalized medicine (a.k.a. precision medicine). It was an invaluable opportunity for me to disseminate my work. The applied scientists in the room provided me valuable suggestions for the computational method I developed, and some future study directions evolved from the conversations with them. Further, I was able to get insightful feedback from experts in the field. Professor Jeffrey Miller from Harvard raised some critical questions during the presentation, and we further discussed the questions afterward.

Attending JSM 2017 offered me a great opportunity to learn the cutting-edge knowledge in this field. Many distinguished scientists presented their latest work in this conference. As a Ph.D. student in my final year, expanding my knowledge and gaining familiarity with the latest research in this field helped me explore different areas for my future research. In particular, I enjoyed attending the talk by Dr. Brad Efron (Stanford) on "Computer Age Statistical Inference" and the talk by Dr. Michael Kosorok (University of North Carolina--Chapel Hill) on "Statistical Machine Learning and Precision Medicine".

In summary, attending JSM 2017 provided me an invaluable opportunity to disseminate my research, get feedback, learn new things, and to build up my professional network. Support from Herbert E. Carter Travel Award has greatly helped make this happen.