STATISTICAL PRACTICE IN EPIDEMIOLOGY USING R

Tartu, Estonia, Friday 30 May to Wednesday 4 June 2014

(See also the attached flyer)

The course is intended for epidemiologists and statisticians who wish to use R (www.r-project.org<http://www.r-project.org>) for statistical modelling and analysis of epidemiological data. The aim of the course is to give participants access to a set of tools in current use by statisticians in epidemiology. The course requires fairly good understanding of statistical principles and some familiarity with epidemiological concepts and study types.

The course will be mainly practically oriented with more than half the time at the computer.

Contents:
* History of R. Language. Objects. Functions.
* Interface to other data formats. Data frames.
* Tabulation of data.
* Logistic regression for case-control-studies.
* Poisson regression for follow-up studies.
* Causal inference.
* Parametrization of models.
* Graphics in R.
* Graphical reporting of results.
* Time-splitting &  Standardized Mortality Ratios.
* Survival analysis and competing risks.
* Multi-state models.
* Nested and matched case-control studies.
* Case-cohort studies.

Venue:
Department of Mathematical Statistics
University of Tartu
J. Liivi 2,
EE - 50409 Tartu
Estonia

Price: 550 EUR for academic participants, 800 EUR for non-academic participants
- Includes tuition, course material, lunches, coffee breaks and social events (welcome cocktail and course dinner).
- Excludes travels, accommodation, and other meals

The course is a self-supporting entity, and there are NO grants or stipends available for travel or participation.

Registration: Send an e-mail which briefly states your qualifications in epidemiology and statistics to the organizers
* Bendix Carstensen: BxC@steno.dk<mailto:BxC@steno.dk>
* Esa Läärä: Esa.Laara@oulu.fi<mailto:Esa.Laara@oulu.fi>
* Krista Fischer: Krista.Fischer@ut.ee<mailto:Krista.Fischer@ut.ee>

Deadline for application: 1st April 2014.
Further information to applicants will be given by e-mail shortly after the deadline.

Course homepage: http://BendixCarstensen.com/SPE

Network Analysis Workshop and NOSOVE General Assembly

Update 14.07.2014
Sadly we have had to cancel the course due to lack of registered participants. We hope it will be possible to organize the course at a later date.

Time:
September 24th -26th, 2014

Venue: 

Hotel L’Ermitage

Toompuiestee 19, 10137 Tallinn, Estonia 

Website: www.lermitagehotel.ee/en/

Instructor: 

Rob Christley

Reader in Epidemiology

Department of Epidemiology & Population Health

Institute of Infection & Global Health, and 

School of Veterinary Science

University of Liverpool,

UK

Provisional Outline

The course will introduce the terminology, methods and some of the software available to analyse networks. The workshop will be a combination of short lectures, discussions and hands-on analysis (half of each day will be spent completing exercises designed to give participants practical experience of network analysis). By the end of the workshop participants will be able to design and undertake studies appropriate for the collection of network data, and use such data to create network images, describe important features of the network and identify important individuals and subgroups within the network. In addition, we will cover aspects of the statistical analysis of network data and the impact of networks on infectious disease dynamics.

Data will be provided for the practical sessions; however, participants will be encouraged to bring their own data to work on during the workshop. In addition, participants are encouraged to discuss their ideas for network analysis with the group.

The course outline below provides the basic course structure and topics to be covered. This may be subject to some modification.

Requirements:

• Course material with notes, practicals and solutions to the exercises will be provided during the first session of the workshop.

• Participants will be required to bring their own laptop.

• Software required: UCINET. A free trial version will be provided for the course.

Costs for participation:

Participation in the whole programme: 300 EUR (includes teaching all days, teaching material, workshop, AGM, all lunches, dinners and coffe breaks) 

Accommodation:

Hotel L’Ermitage; Toompuiestee 19, 10137 Tallinn, Estonia  www: www.lermitagehotel.ee/en/

Rooms have been booked for participant in the NOSOVE workshop/course 

Per night in a single room: 60 EUR including breakfast

Per night in an advanced single room: 72 EUR including breakfast

Per night in a twin or double room: 60 EUR including breakfast for two (30 EUR per person) 

Detailed program and Registration: 

Please click this link

Deadline for registration: 30th of May 2014

NOVA Postgraduate course in Advanced Veterinary Epidemiology - Data Quality

New NOVA course in veterinary epidemiology focusing on data quality.
Tallinn, Estonia September 17-23, 2014

Please note that this course is running just before the NOSOVE course, and also in Tallinn! This is an excellent opportunity to get two courses in one run. Do not miss out!

More information about the NOVA course:
Course information and application
NOVA course website

Open position in department of Production and Population Health, Royal Veterinary College, UK

[Forwarded from SVEPM announcement]

Postdoctoral Researcher
Location:  nr Potters Bar, Hertfordshire
Salary:  £32,196 per annum inclusive of London Allowance
Closing Date:   Thursday 13 February 2014
Interview Date:   Thursday 27 February 2014
Reference:   PPH-0014-14

We are looking for a 3-year fixed term Postdoctoral Researcher to join the Veterinary Epidemiology, Economics and Public Health Group at the Royal Veterinary College.

You will be responsible for the day-to-day running of a Horserace Betting Levy Board-funded project entitled 'Nature versus Nurture: modelling environmental and genetic contributions to risk of racecourse injury in UK Thoroughbreds’. This will include collation, processing and analysis of a large dataset including injury, performance and pedigree data of UK flat racing Thoroughbreds, writing progress reports and publishing findings in peer-reviewed journals. You will be expected to communicate with stakeholders in the UK racing industry.

The ideal candidate would have a PhD in a relevant subject (quantitative veterinary epidemiology, biostatistics, quantitative genetics or similar) and experience of handling and analysing large datasets using advanced statistical methods. Knowledge of, or a keen interest in, the UK racing industry would be advantageous.

For further information about this post including job description and person specification please visit http://jobs.rvc.ac.uk/.

Open position as Lecturer/Senior Lecturer and Fellow/Group Leader in Veterinary Epidemiology

[Posted from announcement by SVEPM]

The University of Surrey, in collaboration with the Pirbright Institute, is advertising a position as Lecturer/Senior Lecturer and Fellow/Group Leader in Veterinary Epidemiology.

Follow this link for more information.

Invitation to expert elicitation on syndromic surveillance in May 2014, Havanna, Cuba

Dear colleague,

We are contacting you on the basis of your expertise in syndromic surveillance and/or animal disease classification methods.

The lack of standardized recording of animal health data, and the consequent difficulties in setting up harmonized syndromic classification, are challenges often raised when syndromic surveillance is under discussion. We are well aware that a range of classification nomenclatures around animal disease exist, but currently there is little incentive for their adoption, especially considering the labour that would be required to recode data from individual institutions’ vocabularies.

Considering these challenges, we are planning to address the problem by gathering a number of experts interested in exploring potential solutions, and supplementing previous efforts with tools from the fields of computer/information science dedicated to the creation of functional ontologies. For more background on these subjects, please refer to the Semantic Web (http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Ontology) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL) (http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/) websites. Additionally, we plan to use machine learning methods to develop tools that will make the proposed ontologies more readily applicable; that is, to provide tools for translation of animal health data into the developed standardized classification system.

The work would consist of a series of iterations between expert knowledge elicitation and the application of machine learning methods. Details are provided in the summary work plan attached. The first instance of expert elicitation is planned to take place in conjunction with the ICAHS2 conference in Havana, Cuba (7-9th, May 2014), as a half-day post-conference workshop (therefore taking place on May 10th, 2014).

If you are interested in this initiative, we kindly ask you to reply to this email (mail to: fernanda.dorea@sva.se) confirming your interest, so that we can keep you on our list of experts for any future activities linked to this project. If, additionally, you will be able to attend the first workshop immediately after the ICAHS2 conference in Havana, in May 2014, please confirm your participation also by replying to this email, and we will send you a confirmation of your workshop registration. Lastly, please feel free to forward this email to any colleagues whose participation in this initiative you judge to be relevant.
Thank you for your attention, and we look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,
Fernanda C. Dórea, National Veterinary Institute-Sweden
Céline Dupuy, French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety-France
Ann Lindberg, National Veterinary Institute-Sweden
Crawford Revie, Canadian Veterinary Epidemiological Research-Canada
Flavie Vial, Veterinary Public Health Institute-Switzerland

Link to work plan

13th Crane Seminar: Risk assessment – improving public health and animal welfare in food production

[Information copied from the course website, please visit for additional information]

Seminar and postgraduate course (3 ECTS)

Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Skara, Sweden, 31 March - 4 April 2014


Risk assessment is used increasingly as a science-based method to describe and quantify risks in human and animal populations, and to identify important determinants of such risks. This seminar addresses the application of risk assessment concepts and methods to improve public health and animal welfare in food production. The seminar includes 5 days on campus in Skara, Sweden.

The Crane Seminar is both a seminar open to anyone, and a postgraduate course (3 ECTS credits) for students on a PhD or residency programme in medicine, veterinary medicine, animal science, or biology. In case of a large number of applicants, PhD students will be given priority on a first-come, first-served basis.

Crane Seminars are recurrent interdisciplinary events organised by the Department of Animal Environment and Health every 2nd-3rd year to connect human and animal sciences under current themes of high societal relevance. Needless to say, the seminar includes an excursion to Lake Hornborga, host of thousands of Cranes at this time of the year.

Welcome to Crane Country in March!