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Statistical Inference and Machine Learning Conference, 12 September 2018

Centre for Quantitative Medicine (CQM), Duke-NUS Medical School, successfully organized a conference “Statistical Inference and Machine Learning” on 12 September 2018.  This conference attracted around 150 researchers, statisticians and clinicians across Singapore. Experts from Duke University, USA (Duke), National University of Singapore (NUS), and Duke-NUS Medical School (Duke-NUS) shared the approaches to analyse big and/or high-dimensional data in the fields of genomics, medicine, and public health. 

A/Prof Tan Say Beng, Senior Associate Dean, Office of Research, Duke-NUS and Group Director, Research, SingHealth, opened up the conference stating that the conference was a good way to bring the statistical community around Singapore together. 


Prof Steve Rozen, Director, CCB (Centre for Computational Biology), Duke-NUS gave the first scientific talk of the conference stating how mutational signature analysis examines the sequence context of mutations to infer the existence of different mutational processes and to attempt to determine the physical, genetic, or biochemical basis for the mutational processes.


A/Prof Yi-Ju Li, Duke University, USA, shared with the audience on her research on how identifying genes for censored traits may fill the gap of missing heritability from qualitative and quantitative traits.

A/Prof Alex Cook, Vice Dean, Research, Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, NUS, shared with the audience his research about developing an approach to estimate the size of hidden, high-risk populations for HIV in Singapore.

A/Prof Roger Zimmermann, Director, Media Management Research Lab, NUS, showcased his recent work in the area of image analytics for cervical cancer screening in the context of low-resource settings. Asst Prof Jin Liu, CQM, Duke-NUS shared with the audience about his statistical approaches to integrating individual-level genotype data and summary statistics in genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Dr Raju Maiti, CQM, Duke-NUS showcased his ongoing work (jointly with B. Chakraborty, L. Jialiang, P. Ghosh, and D. Hausenloy) on how results from multiple diagnostic tests are combined in many ways to improve diagnostic accuracy. The conference ended on a high note at the networking lunch, enabling interaction and new bridges of collaboration to be formed between researchers, statisticians and clinicians.

From Left to Right: Dr Raju Maiti (CQM), Asst Prof Jin Liu (CQM), A/ Prof Roger Zimmermann (NUS), Prof Steve Rozen (CCB), A/ Prof Bibhas Chakraborty (CQM, A/ Prof Yi-Ju Li (Duke University), A/ Prof Alex Cook (NUS), A/Prof Tan Say Beng (Duke-NUS/ SingHealth) and Dr Katherine Wang (HSSR/ CQM)