Staburo @ the 9th Survival Analysis for Junior Researchers

From 13 to 15 September 2023, the 9th SAfJR (Survival Analysis for Junior Researchers) conference took place at the Reisensburg Castle in Günzburg, Germany. The conference, attended by over 60 researchers from around the world, provided a platform for sharing current knowledge in survival analysis. 

The event featured several talks and a poster session. Invited speakers included Torsten Hothorn from the University of Zurich, who presented a tutorial on “A transformation perspective on Survival Analysis”; Torben Martinussen from the University of Copenhagen, who discussed “Subtleties in the interpretation of hazard ratios”; and Jan Feifel from Merck Healthcare KGaA, who spoke about “Real world evidence supporting clinical development in Oncology”. 

Staburo was represented by Maria Blanco, who presented a poster titled “Evaluation of event rate differences using stratified Kaplan-Meier estimates with Mantel-Haenszel weights & adjusted hybrid variance estimators”. This project, a collaboration between Stephan Bischofberger, Hannes Buchner, Gabriele Bleckert and Ling Zhu from Staburo, Rainer-Georg Göldner from Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma GmbH & Co. KG and Bernhard Haller from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), was focused on utilizing the stratified Z test with Kaplan Meier estimates at a fixed time to test the superiority of treatments with survival endpoints. The team aimed to optimize the approach by considering different variance estimators and weights for the strata groups. For those interested, the complete poster is available below: 

The conference, held at the historic Reisensburg Castle – now maintained and used by the Ulm University for scientific conferences – also included a social dinner for attendees. 

Staburo appreciates the opportunity to have participated in this event and looks forward to future conferences. 

Staburo @ Oktoberfest 2023 

O’ zapft is or was – the Staburo annual Wiesn event took place a few days ago. The Oktoberfest is one of Staburo’s annual team events.

This year we were lucky again and had enough tables (70 seats) for the whole team and long-time customers in the Braurösl tent. We are looking back to an entertaining evening including, singing, and dancing within the tent and to some exciting roller coaster rides for some of our colleagues.

In our constantly growing international team, we also had colleagues with us this year for whom it was their first visit to Oktoberfest.

Thanks to everyone who made this evening a wonderful and fun Wiesn team event 2023 – we are already looking forward to the next time!

Staburo @ AMI virtual student days

Are you interested in shaping the future generation of statistics and data science in the pharmaceutical industry? Staburo will be part of the Academia meets industry (AMI) – virtual students’ day.

The AMI event brings together students and representatives of industry and academia. It will take place on 6th of October from 9:00 am – 12:00 pm. Each time slot will be 20 minutes long and for students there will be enough time to get to know the various companies and universities. For more details please refer to the official flyer:

Our core purpose at Staburo is: Excellent data science to improve and save lives. To follow our purpose and to inspire others – a part of our Staburo team will provide insights on Staburo’s core business and expertise, the development of our company as well as interesting opportunities within our company.

At the end of each session there will be plenty of time for networking and discussions.

Many thanks to the organizers of this event – it is always a pleasure to connect with future talents of our industry.

We are already looking forward to seeing you and answering your questions on October 6th.

Staburo presents two posters @ ISCB conference in Milan

The 44th Annual Conference of the International Society for Clinical Biostatistics (ISCB) took place in Milan from the 27th to the 31st of August, and Staburo was there to be part of it. Four team members attended the conference, with two of them presenting posters.

The first poster “The role of quantitative EEG (QEEG) in clinical trials: A methodological review” was presented by Markus Waser, Senior Biostatistician at Staburo. It reviews the current role of quantitative electroencephalography (QEEG) – which is defined as the numerical analysis of EEG signals in both time and frequency domain – in clinical trials. QEEG measures have shown potential as diagnostic biomarkers for neurological indications in observational studies, but there are no universal standards for QEEG application in interventional trials. The presented review results suggest three major current roles of QEEG in clinical trials: 1. Epileptic seizure detection, 2. Anesthesia monitoring during surgery, and 3. Efficacy assessment of interventions for neurological and mental and behavioral disorders. The majority of QEEG assessments is conducted using power spectral analysis.

The second poster, entitled “Deriving interpretable thresholds for Variable Importance in Random Forests by permutation”, was presented by Maria Blanco, Working Student in Biostatistics and Data Science. This research project is a collaborative work involving Maria, Staburo employees Tim Müller, Laura Schlieker and Hannes Buchner, as well as Armin Ott from Roche Diagnostics, and Roman Hornung from the Institute for Medical Information Processing, Biometry and Epidemiology, University of Munich. The project focus on the Random Forest (RF) method, adept at addressing challenges in high-dimensional data analysis and offering accurate predictions. Given its strengths, RF emerges as a potent tool in biomarkers research and personalized medicine. The group has been working on a method to identify all relevant covariables in these predictions.

During the conference, attendees engaged in a variety of parallel talk sessions, courses, and mini symposia. Social events were also on the agenda, including a welcome reception at the Società Umanitaria di Milano and a dinner at the Villa Reale of Monza, a stunning historic palace just outside the city. For those new in biostatistics, the conference featured a student gathering and the Early Career Biostatisticians (ECB) day, complete with several talks.

The event was a rewarding experience for the Staburo team, and we are already looking forward to the next one!

Staburo @ CEN 2023 conference in Basel

Staburo GmbH Head of Biostatistics and Managing Director, Hannes Buchner, will present the research project “Deriving interpretable thresholds for Variable Importance in Random Forests by permutation” during the high-dimensional analysis session at the Central European Network (CEN) conference. This year, the conference is being held in Basel, Switzerland, and the presentation is scheduled for the 6th of September at 9:10 am. (More information about this session can be found here).

The CEN promotes the exchange of biometry knowledge in Central Europe. It’s led by the Austrian Swiss, German, and Polish branches of the International Biometric Society (IBS). The upcoming event, the CEN2023 Conference, will take place from 3-7 September at the University of Basel’s Biozentrum. For those interested in participating, online registration is still open and can be accessed here. For more detailed information about the conference, please visit www.cen2023.ch.

The presented project is a collaboration between Staburo employees Hannes Buchner, Laura Schlieker, Maria Blanco and Tim Müller, as well as Armin Ott from Roche Diagnostics and Roman Hornung from the Institute for Medical Information Processing, Biometry and Epidemiology, University of Munich. The project’s focus is on the Random Forest (RF) method, which is capable of handling challenges present in high-dimensional data analysis and delivers predictions with good accuracy. Given these capabilities, RF is a powerful tool in biomarkers research and personalized medicine. The research group has been working on a method to determine all relevant covariables in these predictions. The talk will introduce the established Boruta algorithm, explain the improvements the proposed method, and then compare the performance of both methods using real and simulated data sets.

We are looking forward to sharing our findings at the conference and warmly invite anyone curious to join and engage in the after-talk discussion!

Staburo Running & Walking Event 2023

Of course, our running and walking event could not be missing in our Staburo team event series this year either. It was already the third self-organized company run. End of July on a summer day with mixed weather forecast, around 30 colleagues of our team met at English garden for the annual run and walk event.

This year the route led past the lake house, the Chinese tower as well as the Japanese garden, where our runners covered a distance of 5 km and the walkers 2.5 km. After a short warm-up session, all participants dressed in their Staburo sports t-shirts met at the starting line near the Milchhäusl. Thus, the run and walk event – and for some also the competition – was on. The paths in the English garden offered enough space for all our athletes and various groups at different speeds were formed.

Just after everyone had arrived at the finish line, already the second thunderstorm for this day hit, and we hurried to our after-event location – the Atzinger in the university area. Due to the weather, we couldn’t sit in the beergarden, but nevertheless we ended this nice and active event evening with delicious food and drinks.

Thanks to everyone who joined our sporty and fun team event. It was a motivating and cheerful atmosphere throughout the evening, and we enjoyed being active together as a team at Staburo. The next team event is just around the corner by end of September – stay tuned!