The 2003 British Regional Conference (IBS-BR03) of the International Biometric Society was held at the University of Reading from Tuesday 16th to Thursday 18th September 2003. Many thanks to the School of Applied Statistics at the University for hosting this first Regional Conference for a number of years. The conference was attended by 100 delegates, including 27 who were past or current students in the Department of Applied Statistics at Reading.
The conference opened with a keynote presentation by Professor Scott Zeger "Does the air we breathe kill? Evidence from spatial-time-series analyses of the National Morbidity and Mortality Air Pollution Study" and closed with a keynote presentation by Professor Bryan Manly "Recent Developments with randomisation and other computer-intensive methods in biology". Between these there were three further invited sessions – on "Regulatory Issues and Adverse Effects", "Quantitative Genetics and Epidemiology" and "Experimental Design", these last two being in honour of the contributions to biometry of Professors Robert Curnow and Roger Mead, respectively – ten contributed sessions (36 papers) and a poster session (13 posters).
The Cedric Smith Prize (sponsored by Wiley) was presented, at the Conference Dinner in Wantage Hall, to Suzanne Clark (and colleagues) for her poster "Modelling spatial trend in aphid suction trap data at the European scale". Following the Conference Dinner, Professor Sir David Cox entertained delegates with reminiscences of some of those involved in the early days of the International Biometric Society, both in the UK and USA.
The Multi-Regional Conference held at the University of Leicester was a great success with around 100 delegates from the British, Netherlands, Belgian and French Regions of the IBS. Many thanks are due to John Thompson of the University of Leicester, and to the Conference Office at the university, for their contributions to the smooth running of the conference.
In addition to the keynote sessions on “Bioinformatics” and “Biometry in Society”, and the invited sessions on “Climate Change”, “Microarrays” and “Biometry in the EU”, the programme include a “Biometrics Showcase” special contributed session, 12 contributed sessions covering a wide range of topics, and a poster session. The abstracts for all the papers presented at the conference are available on the British Region web-site.
We are grateful to Pfizer Global Research and Development for their sponsorship of the Poster Session and Reception, and to Hodder Arnold, Oxford University Press and John Wiley & Sons for their donations of books and journals as prizes. The prize for the best poster was awarded to Ruth King (University of St. Andrews, British Region) and colleagues for their poster “Estimating hidden population sizes in the presence of covariates and prior information”. Prizes for poster presentations were also awarded to Christine Hackett (BioSS, British Region) and Cyril Dalmasso (INSERM, French Region).
Thanks to the generosity of the various publishers, the programme committee decided to also award prizes for the best oral presentations by “young” biometricians (using the usual British Region definition of being under 35 years of age). The prize for the best oral presentation by a young biometrician was awarded to Christel Faes (Limburgs Universitair, Belgian Region) for her presentation emtitled “A GLMM approach to study the spatial and temporal evolution of spikes in the small intestines”. Prizes for oral presentations by young biometricians were also awarded to Marcos Malosetti (Wageningen University, Netherlands Region) and Cecile Proust (ISPED, Universite de Bordeaux, French Region).
During the conference discussions took place between the officers of the four contributing regions regarding the possibilities for further future collaborations between the regions. As a result of these discussions the Netherlands Region agreed to host a further multi-regional conference near Maastricht in April 2007.
The Netherlands Region of the IBS has agreed to host a further multi-regional conference at Rolduc near Maastricht from 8 to 11 May 2007.
Page maintained by R. A. Bailey
Page updated 10/10/06