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About DISS2024

Statistical Innovation for Next-Generation Pharmaceutical Development

Duke Industry Statistics Symposium Logo

The Duke Industry Statistics Symposium (DISS) is organized by the Department of Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, Duke University School of Medicine and several industry and non-profit partners. The first symposium was established in 2013 to discuss challenging issues and recent advances related to the clinical development of drugs, biologics and devices and to promote research and collaboration among statisticians from industry, academia, and regulatory agencies.

The symposium (DISS2024) to be held April 3-5, 2024 at the Hilton Durham near Duke University, under the theme “Statistical Innovation for Next-Generation Pharmaceutical Development“, will explore the forefront of statistical innovation in next-generation clinical research for pharmaceutical products. The advances in biomedical technology, big data science, and artificial intelligence have created a myriad of development opportunities in drug developments. This has prompted a need for integrating multiple cutting-edge tools and approaches into clinical trials research, including machine learning and artificial intelligence, the utilization of electronic health records, implementation of pragmatic trials, patient-centered trial designs, master protocols, adaptive trial design methodologies, and the effective utilization of historical controls and real-world evidence. In contrast to traditional clinical development, these innovative methods require systematically gathering insights from data collected from ongoing clinical trials and external sources, utilization of machine learning and AI algorithms, analysis of high-dimensional clinical, genomics and imaging data as biomarkers for the development of next-generation pharmaceutical products.

The first day of the in-person symposium will be devoted to short courses. The following day and a half will consist of keynote speeches, parallel sessions, and poster lightning talk sessions. 

The Organizing Committee extends a warm welcome to all those who will be joining us.  Please let us know if you need anything during your stay in Durham!

Dean Mary Klotman, MD
Dean Mary E. Klotman, MD

Dean Mary E. Klotman, MD to give DISS Opening Remarks on Thursday, April 4th

Mary E. Klotman, MD is a nationally recognized leader in academic medicine. She was appointed as Duke’s first executive vice president for health affairs and assumed her new role on July 1, 2023. Concurrently, she is serving a second five-year term as dean of the School of Medicine. Previously Klotman served as chair of the Department of Medicine in the Duke University School of Medicine for seven years.

Klotman earned undergraduate and medical degrees from Duke University. She completed internal medicine residency and a fellowship in infectious diseases in the Duke Department of Medicine before joining the faculty as assistant professor of medicine. In 1991 she joined the National Institutes of Health, where she was a member of the Public Health Service.

Before returning to Duke in 2010, Klotman was the Irene and Dr. Arthur M. Fishberg Professor of Medicine and served as chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She was also co-director of Mount Sinai’s Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute. 

Klotman’s research interests focus on the molecular pathogenesis of Human Immunodeficiency Virus 1 (HIV-1) infection. Among many contributions, Klotman and her team demonstrated that HIV resides in and evolves separately in kidney cells, a critical step in HIV-associated kidney disease. Election to the National Academy of Medicine and councilor of the Association of American Physicians stand out among her many accolades.

Register Today!

Journal of Biopharmaceutical Publication

A special issue will be published by the Journal of Biopharmaceutical Statistics based on the invited talks and submitted posters to this symposium. We are happy to announce that the new special issue will be co-edited by Dr. Shibing Deng (Pfizer) and Dr. Zhaoyang Teng (Sevier). If you have an interest in having your manuscripts derived from your talks and posters considered by the special issue, please feel free to reach out to them at shibing.deng@pfizer.com and zhaoyang.teng@servier.com.

DISS2024 Sponsors