Digging into data science at the 38th Annual New England Statistical Symposium

The 38th annual New England Statistical Symposium (NESS) drew more than 300 graduate students, academic experts, and industry leaders to New Haven for workshops and discussions on the latest advances and research trends.

The conference is “pretty comprehensive,” said Dr. Shuangge ‘Steven’ Ma, chair of the Yale School of Public Health’s Biostatistics Department, which hosted the event. Ma added that “we really try to promote interactions between pharma, government agencies, and academia.”

Ma was also recognized as president-elect of The New England Statistical Society, one of the nation’s leading statistical professional organizations.

The symposium featured two days of online short courses in statistics and data science with a focus on practical applications followed by two days of keynote panels and sessions. There were also student and researcher awards, including a best poster competition, and a Statathon.

YSPH Dean Megan L. Ranney, MD, PhD, and Senior Associate Dean of Public Health Data Science and Data Equity, Dr. Bhramar Mukherjee, PhD, opened the conference with a playful rapid-fire Q&A in which Mukherjee asked Ranney her position on different topics related to statistics.

Ranney, YSPH’s C.-E. A. Winslow Professor of Public Health (Health Policy), impressed the audience with her responses:

She is more Bayesian than Frequentist. “I think it’s impossible to run a school if you’re not constantly adjusting your prior and posterior probabilities.”

She dislikes p-values. “In the age of Big Data, I increasingly hate p-values because they serve as a poor excuse for what really matters.”

On Generative AI: “I think they’re an incredible opportunity for us. Just as we embraced Stata and SAAS and M+ and R, I think the new AI tools give us an incredible opportunity to expand what’s possible in our analyses and to instruct our students on how to make sense of the world in new ways. They also provide huge challenges, not just in our teaching but also in the ethics of the world.”

On statisticians’ contributions to science? “You are the underpinning of everything we do.”

A vocal proponent of data-driven leadership and a national leader in firearm injury prevention research, Ranney has made public health data science, data equity, and artificial intelligence education a key priority of her 2025-2030 Strategic Plan for YSPH.

Mukherjee, Yale’s Anna M.R. Lauder Professor of Biostatistics and a professor of statistics and data science, praised Ranney for her knowledge and championing of data science.

Two of the plenary keynotes were by Yale professors.

Dr. Heping Zhang, PhD, the Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Biostatistics with secondary appointments in the Child Study Center and Statistics, spoke about the crossover between statistics and biomedical sciences, presenting advice on the challenges and importance of statistical science methods.

Dr. John Lafferty, PhD, the John C. Malone Professor in the Department of Statistics and Data Science, discussed how to improve the reliability of large language models by applying a technique called chain-of-thought supervision, which essentially teaches the AI model problem-solving skills.

Other keynote speakers were Dr. Nancy Zhang, PhD, a Ge Li and Ning Zhao Professor of Statistics in The Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania, and Dr. Michael Lopez, PhD, Senior Director of Data and Analytics at the National Football League.

The symposium was an “energizing experience filled with inspiring sessions,” said Dr. Yuanye ‘Vickie’ Zhang, PhD, an NESS officer. Zhang is Senior Director and Global Biostatistics Head of Hematology and Solid Tumor Late Phase at Servier, a French pharmaceutical company with U.S. headquarters in Boston. She co-chaired a session titled ‘Navigating Oncology Endpoints in Clinical Trials: Methods, Applications, Study Design Considerations and Beyond.“ She said the session “sparked insightful discussions and highlighted the evolving landscape in oncology trials.”