Staburo @ BIO-Europe 2023 in Munich

Staburo’s Managing Director Roland Stieger joined the BIO-Europe two weeks ago and enjoyed the great networking opportunities of this partnering conference with over 5000 delegates!

In addition to several one-on-one meetings, in which Roland discussed data science challenges of potential partners, we were very happy to have our brand and company information shared at the Bavarian booth, thanks to Bio-M.

Roland also attended the well-organized official BIO-Europe evening receptions, in the famous Residenz and at the Nockherberg where it was very nice to catch up with known and introduced colleagues, all from our industry. Thanks to EBD for this great conference!

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!