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The Section for Statistical Programmers and Analysts promotes discussions of

  • Programming concepts, theories, and techniques that are used for statistical analysis
  • Activities and pre-analysis tasks (e.g., data management) that affect statistical programming
  • Career paths and opportunities

Announcements

SSPA events at JSM 2024:

SSPA Executive Officers meeting

    TBD

    Invited Panel Session

    • Monday, Aug 5: 8:30 AM - 10:20 AM

    Location: 1113 

    Integration of Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) and Real-World Evidence (RWE) Data

    Chair: Margaret Gamalo, PhD, FASA, VP- Pfizer Inc., PA, USA
    Panelists:

    Prof. Lehana Thabane, PhD, FASA, McMaster University, CANADA
    Jianchang Lin, Ph.D., Senior Director, Statistics, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, Boston, MA, USA
    Ilya Lipkovich, PhD, FASA, Executive Director, Eli Lilly and Company, Indianapolis, IN, USA
    Theodore (Ted) Lystig, PhD, FASA, SVP, Chief Analytics Officer, Bridge Bio Therapeutics, CA, USA

    Organizer:  Vipin Arora, Eli Lilly and Company

    Contributed Papers

    • Monday, Aug 5: 2:00 PM - 3:50 PM

    Location: TBD

    Chair: JQuan Zhou, BeiGene

    Macro for Nonnormal data, Meta Analysis and Combining SAS and R for clinical trials, mixed effect models and clinical trial experience of screening patients with Dementia

    Presentations

      1. An effective macro to analyze non-normal data with missing values - Fengzheng Zhu
      2. Risk-assessment of R packages in a Biopharmaceutical Regulatory Setting - Juliane Manitz
      3. Combining R and SAS with tidy functional programming for clinical trial design - James Otto, ALCON Laboratories Inc
      4. Increasing Dimension Asymptotics for Two-Way Crossed Mixed Effect Model - Ziyang Lyu, University of New South Wales
      5. Longitudinal Meta-Analysis Estimates when Mean from Median Estimation is Necessary - Harlan Sayles, University of Nebraska Medical Center
      6. Multimodal deep learning algorithm as a tool for Dementia clinical trial patient disease screening - William Jin, West Windsor - Plainboro High School North

    Topic-Contributed Paper Session 

    • Wednesday, Aug 7: 8:30 AM - 10:20 AM

    Location: 1607

    Advances in the Use of Open-Source Tools in the Planning, Analysis, and Reporting of Clinical Trials

    Chair: Maria Kudela

    Presentations

      1. Considerations in Leveraging Open-Source Tools in the Analysis and Reporting of Clinical Trials Data – Meta-Analysis Tools - Melvin Munsaka, AbbVie
      2. Design Software for Pivotal Trials - Keaven Anderson, Merck & Co., Inc.
      3. Re-imagining Safety Review and Submissions Using Interactive versus Static Outputs - Neetu Sangari, Pfizer
      4. Revolutionize Clinical Trial Data Exploration with {teal} - Vincent Shen

    Contributed Poster Presentations

    • Wednesday, Aug 7: 10:30 AM - 12:20 PM

    Location: Oregon Convention Center

    Chair: Ryan Peterson, University of Colorado - Anschutz Medical Campus
    Presentation

    Effortless Access to Household Pulse Survey Datasets with {hpsr}: An R Data Package - Prasad Bhoite

    SSPA Mixer

      TBD

      Invited Panel Session

      • Wednesday, Aug 7: 10:30 AM - 12:20 PM

      Room: 1019

      Role of a Statistician in Drug Development in AI World

      Chair: Vipin Arora, Eli Lilly and Company
      Panelists:

      Brian Traceym Director, Statistics, Takeda, Boston, MA. 
      Paul Schuette, Scientific Computing Coordinator for the Office of Biostatistics – CDER, FDA, Silver Springs, Maryland.
      Chris Miller, Vice President - Biometrics, Astra Zeneca, Gaithersburg - Maryland.
      Kent Koprowicz, Vice President, DMC - Cytel.
      Xiaochun Li, Professor, Department of Biostatistics and Health Data Science, Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, School of Medicine, Fairbanks School of Public Health, Indiana University, Indianapolis, IN.
      Organizer: Vipin Arora, Eli Lilly and Company

      Other Information:

      The ASA’s Section on Statistical Programmers and Analysts (SSPA) invites students to apply for:
      Grants:
      SSPA Conference Grant Program for Students and Recent Graduates: A grant program to pay the primary registration fees for section members who have recently graduated and want to attend an ASA conference. 

      Details and requirements for both applications can be found here.

      Recent News

      2023 AISPAA Awardee

      Message from Vipin Arora- 2023 SSPA Chair

      Please join me in congratulating Dr. Jacob Bien as the winner of the AISSPA Innovation Award!!

      Dr. Jacob Bien is a Dean's Associate Professor in Business Administration in the Department of Data Sciences and Operations at the University of Southern California.

      Dr. Bien has made outstanding contributions, including R packages supporting his statistics papers (around 25 R packages). However, what truly distinguishes Dr. Bien from many other statisticians are two major software development projects: "simulator" and "litr" R packages. A common thread between these two R packages is that they are designed to increase the quality of code written by statisticians and to facilitate the process of writing high-quality code. This speaks directly to the three categories considered for the award by the SSPA Award committee (Improvement in software tools for statistical programming and analytics, Methodology to improve the efficiency of statistical programming and analytics and outstanding contributions to the community of statistical programmers and analysts).

      In summary, Dr. Bien's contributions have benefited the statistical community and the public in general. On behalf of SSPA, I also want to thank Prof Daniela Witten, Professor, and Dorothy Gilford, Endowed Chair Departments of Statistics & Biostatistics, University of Washington, for taking the time to nominate Dr. Bien!

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      2023 Activities

      The SSPA officers meet the first Friday of each month at 11:00 am Central. 

      1. A Charter amendment has been proposed to handle the situation when an elected Executive Committee member
        of SSPA (referred as an officer) is not able to continue in their role.
        • The amendment is currently under review by officers until the end of June 11.
        • Following the officers’ review, it will be sent to SSPA members for review, which will last for two weeks.
      2. Dhuly Chowdhury is appointed as SSPA nominated officer.
      3. JSM-related: The list of SSPA-sponsored or co-sponsored sessions (invited, contributed, and poster) included in the JSM program is available. 

        Testimonials

        • SSPA provides a venue for us statistical programmers to discuss interests, share experiences, knowledge and challenges, and support each other across organizations, career stages and geographic locations.
        • Joining SSPA is an investment in my career and provides a solid platform to me for interacting effectively with peers.
        • SSPA increases awareness of our roles in the entire statistical and analytics community.

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