The 201st Ordinary Meeting of the Region in November 2002, which included the 2002 AGM, continued with the one-day format established in 2000. This meeting was held at Rothamsted Research, and started with a session on GM crops with papers by Peter Rothery (CEH Monks Wood) on "Design and Analysis of the Farm-Scale Evaluations of Genetically Modified Herbicide-Tolerant Crops" and by Andrew Watkinson (University of East Anglia) on "Understanding the potential impact of GM crops on farmland birds". Following the AGM were three papers by "Young Biometricians" – Diana Cole (University of Kent at Canterbury) talked about "Models for Yeast Prions", Kevin Dawson (Rothamsted Research) described "A Bayesian approach to assignment problems in population genetics", and Claudio Verzilli (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) presented work on "Assessing uncertainty about parameter estimates with incomplete repeated ordinal data". The meeting closed with Rosemary Bailey's Presidential Address "Design of Experiments in Biometry: From Example to Theory and Back", with discussion lead by Roger Mead (University of Reading) and Paul Darius (University of Leuven, Belgium).
The second meeting of the year (the 202nd Ordinary Meeting in March 2003) was a half-day meeting on "HRT and Life Course Modelling". The first session on Life Course Modelling featured papers by Bianca De Stavola (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) on "Statistical issues in life course epidemiology" and Daniel Nagin (Carnegie Mellon University, USA and University of Cambridge) on "Analyzing Developmental Trajectories: A Semiparametric, Group-Based Approach". The second session on HRT included papers on "Statistics and the media – a Clinicians viewpoint" by David Purdie (Centre for Metabolic Bone Disease, Hull) and "Randomised trials and observational tribulations – lessons from HRT" by Stephen Evans (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine).
September 2003 saw the highlight of the year, and the first of what we hope will be a regular series of Regional Conferences. This was the first such meeting since the 50th Anniversary Conference in Edinburgh in 1998, and was hosted by the School of Applied Statistics at the University of Reading. The conference opened with a keynote presentation by Scott Zeger (Johns Hopkins University, USA) entitled "Does the Air We Breathe Kill: Evidence from Spatial-Time-Series Analyses of the National morbidity and Mortality Air Pollution Study (NMMAPS)". The first invited session on "Regulatory Issues and Adverse Effects" included contrasting papers by Peter Chapman (Syngenta) on "Biometrical Issues in Ecological Hazard and Risk Assessment within the Crop Protection Industry" and Stephen Evans (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) on "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in Monitoring Adverse Effects of Human Medicines". The other invited sessions were in honour of Robert Curnow and Roger Mead, reflecting their contributions to biometry, and including an ex-PhD student of each as one of the speakers. A session on "Quantitative Genetics and Epidemiology" (in honour of Robert Curnow) included papers by Richard Mott (Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, Oxford) on "Finding Genes Affecting Quantitative Traits in Mice" andSheila Bird (MRC Biostatistics Unit, Cambridge) entitled "Prions and Projections: from vCJD to HCV (Hepatitis C)". In honour of Roger Mead, a session on "Experimental Design" featured papers by Steve Gilmour (Queen Mary College, University of London) on "Future Directions for Designed Experiments" and John Eccleston (University of Queensland, Australia) entitled "On the Design of Multi-Environment Trials and 2-Phase Experiments". The closing keynote presentation was given by Bryan Manly (Western EcoSystems Technology, Wyoming, USA) on "Recent Developments with Randomization and Other Computer-Intensive Methods in Biology". In addition there were ten contributed paper sessions, including 36 contributed papers, and a contributed poster session. The Cedric Smith Poster Prize (sponsored by Wiley) was awarded to Suzanne Clark and colleagues (Rothamsted Research) for her poster "Modelling spatial trend in aphid suction trap data at the European scale". Further prizes were awarded to Stefan van Dongen (Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development) and Marcos de Resende and colleagues (Rothamsted Research) for their posters. The Conference Dinner, held in the impressive surroundings of Wantage Hall, was followed by reminiscences from Sir David Cox of some of the founding forces of the IBS, both in the UK and USA. Around 100 delegates attended the conference, and the Regional Committee is grateful for the support of the School of Applied Statistics at Reading in hosting the conference. The next Regional Conference is already planned for April 5-7, 2005 at the University of Leicester, hopefully to be held jointly with another IBS Region.
The low-point of the year was certainly the sad and unexpected death of Rob Kempton in early May. As with everything he did, Rob had taken to the role of International President-Elect with great enthusiasm, and had already made fresh contributions to the British Region at our committee meeting in March, as well as attending an Executive Meeting in the USA in April. His funeral was attended by many from the biometrical community in the UK, including representatives of the British Region, and by Geert Molenberghs from the Executive Committee of the IBS. Rob will be sadly missed by both the British Region and the International Biometric Society more widely. A meeting in his memory is planned for April 2004 in Edinburgh.
Relationships with the Royal Statistical Society and with PSI have also progressed further during the last year. A meeting between officers of the RSS and IBS-British Region was held in April, and opportunities for working more closely together identified. A joint meeting is planned for June 2004 to celebrate the 80th birthday of Sir David Cox. Similarly meetings have been held between representatives of the British Region committee and the PSI Scientific Committee, and a joint meeting on "Biomarkers" has been planned for early February 2004. Regarding recruitment, the Region was represented at two "young statisticians" meetings in April 2003 (and has plans for attending similar meetings in 2004), and work is in progress on developing a new recruitment leaflet to be widely distributed.
As always the committee welcomes comments on our plans, and suggestions from the membership. Finally I would like to thank the other officers and committee members for their support and enthusiasm during the past year, particularly Rosemary Bailey and Gillian Arnold who have served as fellow officers of the Region since my election as Secretary three years ago.
Andrew Mead
14 October 2003