A Conference in Honor of David Oakes

The Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology at the University of Rochester will host a 1-day conference to recognize the contributions of Professor David Oakes to the field of statistics and to the department.

Friday, September 12, 2025

Registration Deadline: August 1, 2025
(Late registration is not guaranteed but allowed on a first-come first-served basis as space and resources permit. Please contact Ms. Jillian Cordts and Ms. Kristine Pittinaro.)

The conference, celebrating David’s retirement, will focus on modern developments in survival analysis and related topics. It will bring together researchers making fundamental contributions to survival analysis, researchers with deep ties to biomedical research, methodology and applications. This will be a valuable opportunity for graduate students and new researchers who may not otherwise have the opportunity to see emerging survival analytic methods with applications to biomedical research.

Invited speakers include Drs. Rebecca Betensky, Richard Cook, Danyu Lin, Amita Manatunga, Ross Prentice, Doug Schaubel, and Mei-Cheng Wang.

We are planning to host a poster session and social hour after the conference, with priority for posters given to graduate students and postdocs. We can accommodate up to 20 posters. Are you interested in presenting a poster? If yes, please email Dr. Wahed a tentative title and abstract by 8/1/25 and you will be notified as to whether your poster has been accepted for presentation.

About Dr. Oakes

Dr. Oakes came to Rochester in 1983 and has served as chair of Statistics and of Biostatistics and interim chair of Biostatistics and Computational Biology. He has had a lasting collaboration with the Department of Neurology involving clinical trials for Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease. He has a longstanding interest in occupational and environmental medicine and was PI of the University of Rochester NIEHS T32 training grant for 20 years. He has also worked with investigators in cardiology, infectious diseases and pediatrics. He has authored or co-authored four books and over 200 peer-reviewed papers.

Dr. Oakes has played a major role in the analysis of survival data, including studies of frailty models and copulas for bivariate survival outcomes. Another area of contribution is the "win-ratio," a method of summarizing multiple outcome data in clinical trials which gives priority to the more important outcome. He served as an Associate Editor of Biometrika from 1979-2008 and has a long-standing relationship with the journal Lifetime Data Analysis, including as co-Editor. The following quote comes from a recent special issue of the journal honoring him: