The NIC-ASA was formed in 1984. Its purpose is to foster statistics and its applications and to promote the interests of the statistical profession among all groups in the Northeastern Illinois area having an interest in or being concerned with statistical problems. The chapter primarily addresses this objective by organizing a Spring Training Course and by working with the Midwest Chapter of the ICSA (International Chinese Statistical Association) to sponsor a joint Fall Meeting. The responsibility for organizing that meeting alternates between the two groups yearly. In addition, NIC-ASA holds monthly officer meetings, publishes newsletters on the chapter website, and publishes chapter chatter articles on the ASA portal. Other ways of accomplishing this objective are constantly being sought. If you have any suggestions, please do not hesitate to send an email to the chapter at nic.amstat@gmail.com.
More specific information about the chapter can be found in the navigation links that are in this website.
Announcement
2026 NIC-ASA Spring Symposium & Volunteer Event
The NIC-ASA is delighted to invite you to its inaugural Spring Symposium, a half-day in-person event themed “Statistical Practice in the Age of AI: Innovation and Risk.” This symposium will feature insightful presentations from speakers in industry and academia, highlighting how artificial intelligence is shaping statistical practice across the pharmaceutical, clinical operations, and academic research.
Following the symposium, attendees are warmly invited to participate in an optional volunteer activity at Bernie’s Book Bank in support of children in need.
Date: May 15, 2026
Location: Bernie’s Book Bank, 917 N Shore Dr, Lake Bluff, IL 60044
Time:
Symposium: 9am-12pm
Lunch: 12-1 pm.
Volunteer activity: 1-3pm
Featured Speakers
· Yinan Zheng, AbbVie
Topic: Agentic AI in Pharma Statistics: Automating Workflows from Data to Clinical Insights
Abstract: This talk explores the paradigm shift from passive AI "copilots" to Autonomous AI Agents that seamlessly connect multi-step workflows in biopharmaceutical statistics. The talk will demonstrate a fully compliant, End-to-End Trial Design Agent that autonomously extracts literature parameters, executes dynamic sample size calculations, and projects actionable trial timelines. By automating these processes, attendees will see how Agentic AI empowers statisticians to transition from manual data wrangling to focusing on strategic clinical trial design.
· Charlie Chen, Astellas
Topic: The Way We Work as Statisticians Has Changed: AI in Clinical Operations
Abstract: In this talk, we will have an overview of agentic AI applications in clinical operation (help site selection, exploratory data analysis, and etc.). We will also show examples how AI was utilized in our real projects like patient heatmaps and site exclusion list creation.
· Bowei Xi, Purdue University
Topic: AI Vulnerabilities and Uncertainties
Abstract: Although AI is developing rapidly, AI's vulnerability under adversarial attacks remains an extraordinarily difficult problem. This talk will first discuss the root cause of adversarial examples through studying the deep neural network's (DNN) classification boundary. We show there are a lot more adversarial examples given one clean sample, all within a small neighborhood of the clean sample. We then define DNN uncertainty regions and show the transferability of adversarial examples is not universal. We introduce a deep ensemble with high accuracy over the adversarial examples. The talk also provides an overview of the adversarial attacks against LLMs, including the privacy attacks, jailbreak attacks, fine tuning based attacks, and backdoor attacks.
Following the symposium, attendees are encouraged to stay for a volunteer activity that will help bring more books to children in need. Volunteers who are unable to attend the symposium are still welcome to participate, though registration is required.
Registration Fee: $25
Registration Link:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2026-nic-asa-spring-symposium-volunteer-event-tickets-1987349300255?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=cp&aff=ebdsshcopyurl
Please register no later than 5/12.