Computational and Methodological Statistics and Biostatistics

Dr. Andriëtte Bekker is a professor and the current head of the Department of Statistics at the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, at the University of Pretoria. Her expertise lies in statistical distribution theory and comprises the study, development and expansion of distributions, and the addressing of parametric statistical inferential aspects, within the classical as well as the Bayesian framework. She is the academic research leader of the Statistical Theory and Applied Statistics focus area within the Department of Science and Technology/ National Research Foundation (DST-NRF) Centre of Excellence in Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, as well as  an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. Dr. Bekker has published more than 70 peer-reviewed papers in fundamental statistical research.Dr. Ding-Geng Chen is a fellow of American Statistical Association and currently the Wallace Kuralt distinguished professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as well as the South Africa DST-NRF-SAMRC, SARChI in Biostatistics (Tier 1). He was a professor in biostatistics at the University of Rochester and the Karl E. Peace endowed eminent scholar chair in biostatistics at Georgia Southern University. He is also a senior statistics consultant for biopharmaceuticals and government agencies with extensive expertise in Monte-Carlo simulations, clinical trial biostatistics and public health statistics. Dr. Chen has more than 150 referred professional publications and co-authored and co-edited twenty-three books on clinical trial methodology, meta-analysis and public health applications. He has been invited nationally and internationally to give speeches on his research. Dr. Johan Ferreira is currently a senior lecturer in the Department of Statistics at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and is Junior Focus Area Coordinator for the Statistical Theory and Applied Statistics focus area ofthe Centre of Excellence in Mathematical and Statistical Science based at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He regularly publishes in accredited peer-reviewed journals and reviews manuscripts for international journals. He is an ASLP 4.1/4.2 fellow of Future Africa and has been identified as one of the Top 200 South Africans under the age of 35 by the Mail & Guardian newspaper in the Education category in 2016.

• 1. Computational Issues Of Maximum Likelihood Estimation Of The Skew-T Distribution And A Proposal For The Initialization Of Numerical Optimization - by Adelchi Azzalini (University of Padua, Italy) and Mahdi Salehi (University of Neyshabur, Iran).- 2. Modelling Earthquakes: Characterizing Inter-Arrival Times And Magnitude - by Christophe Ley (Ghent University, Belgium) and Rosaria Simone (University of Naples Frederico II, Italy).- 3. Multivariate Order Statistics Induced By Ordering Linear Combinations Of Components Of Multivariate Elliptical Random Vectors - by Ahad Jamalizadeh (Shahid Bahonar University, Iran), Roohollah Roozegar (Yasouj University, Iran), Narayanaswamy Balakrishnan (McMaster University, Canada) and Mehrdad Naderi (University of Pretoria, South Africa).- 4. Spatial Interpolation Of Extreme PM1 Values Using Copulas - by Alfred Stein, Fakhereh Alidoost and Vera van Zoest (University of Twente, The Netherlands).- 5. Distributional Aspects Of The Condition Number From A Unified Complex Wishart Setting - by Johannes Ferreira and Andriëtte Bekker (University of Pretoria, South Africa).- 6. Weighted Bivariate Pólya-Aeppli Type Ii Distributions - by Claire Geldenhuys and René Ehlers (University of Pretoria, South Africa).- 7. On The Distribution Of Linear Combinations Of Chi-Square Random Variables - by Carlos A. Coelho (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal).- 8. Constructing Multivariate Distributions Using The Dirichlet As A Baseline - by Seite Makgai (University of Pretoria, South Africa), Mohammad Arashi (Shahrood University of Technology, Iran), Daan de Waal (University of the Free State), and Andriëtte Bekker (University of Pretoria, South Africa).- 9. Evaluating Risk Measures Using The Normal Mean-Variance Birnbaum-Saunders Distribution - by Mehrdad Naderi (University of Pretoria, South Africa), Ahad Jamalizadeh (Shahid Bahonar University, Iran), Wan-Lun Wang (Feng Chia University, Taiwan), Tsung-I Lin (National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan).- 10. On High-Dimensional Multivariate Bayesian Geostatistics - by Sudipto Banerjee (University of California, USA).- 11. On Improving The Performance Of Logistic Regression Analysis Via Extreme Ranking - by Hani M. Samawi (Georgia Southern University, USA).- 12. Optimal Sample Size Allocation For Multi-Level Stress Testing With Extreme Value Regression Under Time Censoring - by Ping Shing Chan (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong),Hon Yiu So (University of Waterloo, Canada), Hon Keung Tony Ng (Southern Methodist University, USA) and Wei Gao (Northeast Normal University, China).- 13. Robust Mixtures Of Scale Mixtures In The Exponential Family - by Frans Kanfer and Sollie Millard (University of Pretoria, South Africa).- 14. Variable Selection Of Interval-Censored Failure Time Data - by Tony Sun (University of Missouri, USA).- 15. On The Design Of A Platform Trial For The Treatment Of Recurrent Clostridium Difficile Infection By Fecal Microbiota Transplantation - by Christine H. Lee (Royal Jubilee Hospital, Canada), Dina Kao (University of Alberta, Canada), Theodore Steiner (University of Vancouver, Canada), Augustine Wigle (University of Guelph, Canada) and Peter T. Kim (University of Guelph, Canada).- 16. Recent Advances In Bayesian Adaptive Designs And Applications - by J. Jack Lee (University of Texas, USA).- 17. Generalizability Theory For Clinician-Rated Outcomes - by Joseph C. Cappelleri (Executive Director of Biostatistics, Pfizer Inc).- 18. Simultaneous Variable Selection And Estimation In Generalized Semiparametric Mixed Effect Modeling Of Longitudinal Data - by Mozhgan Taavoni and Mohammad Arashi (Shahrood University of Technology, Iran).- 19. Generalized Rayleigh-Exponential-Weibull Distribution and its Application to Modelling of Progressive Type-I Interval Censored Data - by Ding-Geng Chen (University of Pretoria) and Y. L. Lio (University of South Dakota).- 20.  Applications Of Spatial Statistics In Poverty Alleviation In China- by Yong Ge (State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, China).- 21. Using Improved Robust Estimators In Semiparametric Models For High Dimensional Data - by Mahdi Roozbeh and  Mina Norouzirad (Semnan University, Iran).- 22. GMM marginal models with time dependent covariates - by Elsa Vazquez (Arizona State University) and Jeffrey R Wilson (Arizona State University).