Workshop on Microarray, 20-22 February 2003

Workshop on Statistical Aspects of Microarray Data. 20-22 February 2003 at the Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Aarhus.

The workshop was organized by Jens Ledet Jensen (University of Aarhus), Mathisca de Gunst (EURANDOM, Eindhoven/Free University of Amsterdam), Mats Rudemo (Stochastic Centre, Gothenburg), and Michael Sørensen (University of Copenhagen), and the workshop was funded by Maphysto and by a grant from the Danish National Science Foundation. The workshop is part of the Maphysto initiative in mathematical modelling in biology.

It was the aim of the workshop to have a discussion of the statistical issues of importance for the analysis of microarray data. The main topics being adressed was

data transformation and normalization issues,
finding differentiable expressed genes, and
statistical inference based on microarray data.

There were a total of 15 lectures. David Edwards (Copenhagen), Anja von Heydebreck (Berlin), Rafael Irizarry (Baltimore), Steen Knudsen (Copenhagen), Volkmar Liebscher (Müunchen), and Claus Mayer (Aberdeen) spoke about data transformation and normalization issues, Jørg Assmus (Bergen), Jelle Goeman (Leiden), and Mette Langaas (Trondheim) spoke about finding differentiable expressed genes, and Arnoldo Frigessi (Oslo), Mark van der Laan (Berkely), Yudi Pawitan (Stockholm), Mats Rudemo (Gothenburg), and Ernst Wit (Glasgow) spoke about statictical inference based on microarray data. Also there was a survey lecture by Torben F. Ørntoft (Aarhus) about medical implications of the microarray technology.

The workshop were very fruitful and almost 100 people had registrered for the event. A collection of extended abstracts is available as No. 23 in MaPhySto's Miscellanea Series.

Report by Jens Ledet Jensen