We are seeing in the published literature an increasing number of studies, editorials, and commentaries highlighting reproducibility and replication issues in scientific results. How are scientists addressing the reproducibility problem? Join us for a deep dive and thoughtful conversation on ways publishers, researchers, and educators, can contribute to the reproducibility crisis solution.

Date: Tuesday, December 15
Time: 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM
Location: Zoom Webinar – REGISTER NOW

Speakers/Panelists:

Daniel Evanko, PhD, Director of Journal Operations and Systems at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)

Dr. Evanko is the Director of Journal Operations and Systems at the AACR where he oversees the editorial operations of its nine research journals. Prior to that he was the Chief Editor of Nature Methods and later the Head of Editorial Services at Springer Nature. He has been heavily involved in efforts to improve the communication, transparency, and reproducibility of published scientific research for over 10 years.

Frances Weis-Garcia, PhD, Head of the Bi-Institutional Antibody and Bioresource Core Facility, Sloan Kettering Institute

Frances Weis-Garcia has headed the Bi-Institutional Antibody and Bioresource Core Facility for more than 20 years. She is past president of the Association of Biomolecular Resource Core Facilities, a professional society for those focused biomolecular technologies that make research possible. Frances earned her PhD from Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences after conducting her thesis work at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and performed her post-doctoral studies at the Rockefeller University.

Adrian Halme, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Cell Biology, Assistant Dean for Graduate Research and Training, Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program, University of Virginia School of Medicine

Adrian Halme is an Associate Professor of Cell Biology and Assistant Dean for Graduate Research and Training at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Adrian received his doctoral training in the lab of Dr. Gerry Fink at the Whitehead Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and trained as a Postdoctoral Fellow with Dr. Iswar Hariharan at the University of California at Berkeley. Before taking his position as Assistant Dean, Adrian was the Assistant Director of the Advanced Microscopy Facility at the UVA School of Medicine, an experience which helped make him acutely aware of the issues of rigor and reproducibility as it applies to light imaging. In his role overseeing graduate and research training, he has been working to expand rigor and reproducibility training for graduate students including collaborating with Dr. Katie Sol-Church, director of the Genomics and Sequence Core at UVA to create “technical rotations” for first-year graduate students, where core-facility faculty would provide hands-on training in best practices for different research techniques. .

Andrew Vickers, PhD, Attending Research Methodologist, Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Memorial Sloan Kettering

Dr. Vickers’ research falls into three broad areas: randomized trials, surgical outcomes research and molecular marker studies. A particular focus of his work is the detection and initial treatment of prostate cancer. Dr Vickers has analyzed the ’learning curve’ for radical prostatectomy. He is working on a series of studies demonstrating that a single measure of prostate specific antigen (PSA) taken in middle age can predict lethal prostate cancer up to 30 years subsequently. He has also developed a statistical model to predict the result of prostate biopsy, work that has been commercialized and is clinically available through Opko Diagnostics. His work on randomized trials focuses on methods for integrating randomized trials into routine surgical practice so as to compare different approaches to surgery. As part of this work he has pioneered the use of web-interfaces for obtaining quality of life data from patients recovering from radical prostatectomy. Dr. Vickers’ methodological research centers primarily on novel methods for assessing the clinical value of predictive tools. In particular, he has developed decision-analytic tools that can be directly applied to a data set, without the need for data gathering on patient preferences or utilities. Dr Vickers has a strong interest in teaching statistics. He is course leader for the MSK biostatistics course and is author of the introductory textbook “What is a p-value anyway?” In his capacity as Co-Director of the PRO-CEL Core Facility, Dr. Vickers spearheads a number of innovative informatics initiatives throughout MSK, including the Amplio quality assurance system.