The SSA Queensland Branch awarded funding towards attending ISCB ASC 2108 to three students. One of them (Aswi) shares her thoughts here on the conference highlights and benefits: 

The joint International Society for Clinical Biostatistics and Australian Statistical Conference 2018 (ISCB ASC 18) was a five-day (26-30 August 2018) international conference in Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, Melbourne, Australia with variety of activities. It started officially on 27 August 2018 with the opening ceremony, but it was preceded by six pre-conference short courses and early career researchers’ networking event. I attended the excellent short courses on multistate survival analysis given by the creator of the rstat survival package Terry Therneau, and I learnt a lot. The participants really enjoyed this and were very enthusiastic, including engaging in discussions with the facilitator even during breaks.

The conference included five keynote speakers, 11 invited sessions with 33 speakers, 44 oral contributed sessions with 249 speakers, and 109 poster presenters with 40 entries in the poster pitch competition. The delegates came from many different countries, including about six people from my home country, Indonesia. I was particularly impressed by the first keynote speaker, Professor Susan Murphy, who talked about “stratified micro-randomized trials with applications in mobile health”. This was a new topic for me that I can implement in my country when I return. She ended her talk with a song about “experiment”.

I presented my research in a parallel session, speaking on Bayesian spatio-temporal modelling on dengue fever in Makassar, Indonesia, and acknowledged ACEMS  and SSA Qld branch for supporting my attendance. I received helpful feedback. There were five presenters talking about spatial or spatio-temporal models in Epidemiology in this session. One of these was my colleague Dr Sri Astuti Thamrin who talked about Bayesian spatial models for dengue fever related to socio-economic factors in Makassar, Indonesia.                 

                                                                                                                                    Aswi shared her research on Bayesian spatio-temporal modelling on dengue fever
                                                                                                                                    and acknowledged ACEMS and SSA Qld branch for supporting her attendance

Another interesting feature in this conference was the poster pitch competition. Every presenter talked for three minutes. The three best students and non-students respectively had a showdown in the plenary “best of the best poster session”. By online voting, Susanna Cramb won the non-student section (55%). Her fantastic talk and song was about the new National Cancer Atlas of Australia and a new v-plot visualisation.

An Early Career Researchers’ day was held on the last day of this conference. Brilliant talks were given by Louise Ryan and Susanna Cramb. Louise Ryan shared her stories and suggestions to the early career researchers. She highlighted that “research is how to figure out the questions and it is extremely difficult”. Susanna shared some tips in the pursuit of research happiness/funding.

Overall, this was a very valuable experience for me in presenting my research, learning new methods and networking with statisticians from across the globe.

Aswi, PhD Candidate
School of Mathematical Sciences
Queensland University of Technology

Short course on multistate survival analysis given by Terry Therneau

                                                                                                 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Susanna Cramb talked on the early career researchers’ day

Susanna Cramb as the winner of the best of the best three minutes poster competition