The Harvard Catalyst Biostatistics Program had an eventful year.
The Program saw many successes in 2020, in spite of the challenges of COVID-19. Our biostatistician and bioinformatician consultants once again provided over 1,000 consultations; the transition to remote consultations via Zoom has been relatively seamless. Investigators across Harvard and Harvard-affiliated hospitals were helped on various issues, ranging from designing a study or a clinical trial, to receiving advice on specific analytic techniques, or simply exploring a pilot study feasibility, to name a few.
Our annual symposium, Precision Medicine: Statistical Opportunities and Challenges, which had been scheduled for April 2020, was postponed due to the lockdown. It is now going to be held remotely on April 14 2021. We anticipate a large online turnout for this cutting-edge topic.
During the year, we also offered a variety of continuing education opportunities for the Harvard community at our Short Courses and engaged students, postdoctoral trainees, faculty and researchers in stimulating discussions at our Journal Club meetings. We tackled modeling ordinal categorical data, explored how machine learning techniques can be used for prediction, and considered modeling of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and mobile health data, and many other interesting topics.
As we bid farewell to 2020 (finally!), we invite you to stay in contact and hope to see you at our future events. If you’re not already on our mailing list, we invite you to join by sending a note to Denise Simon, Program Manager, at CatalystBiostats@catalyst.harvard.edu.
Best wishes and happy holidays from all of us at the Harvard Catalyst Biostatistics Program!
