News

YBA 2017 winner announced

We are delighted to announce that the BIR-FMT 2017 Young Biometrician Award has been won by Anaïs Rouanet of the MRC Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge, for her paper “Joint latent class model for longitudinal data and interval-censored semi-competing events: application to dementia” (Biometrics 2016; 72: 1123-1135). The Region is delighted that Anaïs will be able to join past winners speaking at our meeting on 28th November – details to follow shortly.

The judges commented that “The paper addresses the important issue of cognitive decline and dementia in later life. It deals with longitudinal data, in which the onset of dementia is interval-censored.  The paper is both technically impressive and well explained, and complete code is provided to make the methodology accessible to others.” The award includes a diploma and a prize of £1000 and will be presented at a BIR meeting on 28th November.

The panel also gave honourable mention to Emily Dennis of Butterfly Conservation & the University of Kent for her paper “A generalised abundance index for seasonal invertebrates” (Biometrics 2016; 72: 1305–1314), and to David Hughes of the University of Liverpool for his paper “Dynamic longitudinal discriminant analysis using multiple longitudinal markers of different types” (Statistical Methods in Medical Research 2016, epub).

The panel of three judges comprised Professors Rosemary Bailey (University of St Andrews, representing the FMT), Simon Thompson (University of Cambridge, representing the BIR) and Graham Hepworth (University of Melbourne, international judge). The judges commented: "We are pleased to note that there were many more nominations this year than previously.  We should like to make clear that new, sound, interesting methodology for a genuine biometrical problem, presented and explained well, was our primary criterion for judging.  We did not focus on longitudinal data; nor did we insist on accompanying software."