The Summer Institute in Biostatistics at Emory University, a review

This summer, I attended the Emory Summer Institute in Biostatistics (SIBS) at Emory, and I wanted to write down my thoughts and share some cool things we saw and did.

SIBS is a 6 week program designed to introduce the field of biostatistics and convince people to go to graduate school for biostatistics. There are 3-7 sites every year since 2004, where it started at the University of Wisconsin, Boston University, and North Carolina State. This last year, they had either 5 or 7 sites (when I applied there were only 5, but now on the website there are 7). I got into 4 programs, and chose Emory University because I wanted to see if I would like a big city environment, and see if the summers were unbearable like everyone says. Also, the program director I was in contact with, Dr. Waller, seemed like the nicest person in the world from our communications.

I left on Monday, June 10th and got back on Friday, July 19th. In those 6 weeks, I made a couple close friends, learned about biostatistics and bioinformatics, and explored Atlanta. I took more pictures in Atlanta than I've taken in the rest of my life combined it seemed like, and would like to share some of them on here now.

I'm not in this picture, but I thought it was
really cool because my friends are so
photogenic. This is after about an hour
shutdown of the rides in Six Flags.

We got ice cream after seeing
a band. The line was like 40
minutes long but it was worth it.

Micheal and me being a goals couple. 

From front to back, this is Shrav, Michael, Don, and me at the
Georgia Aquarium. Photo creds to Kevin, who didn't make the cut anywhere on here

On the left is Michael and me at the CDC where we tried on some of the space suit thingys that they use in
the lab. On the right is most of the squad at a Braves game. The Braves played terrible that night. Also,
one of the TAs set up everything and we paid $16 for the seats. Across the stadium there were student tickets
for $5... On top is Michael, Shrav, and me at Six Flags. Apparently all my photos are from Six Flags. 

Photos are hard on here, they don't work very well. I'm glad that part is done. 

Course-wise, the first two weeks down there we went over some basic statistics concepts, which was intended to be review. We did introductory concepts like descriptive statistics, probability, distributions, hypothesis testing, and linear and logistic models. These were taught by Ph.D. student TAs and Dr. Moore, one of the coordinators. After that, we had more specialized topics like spacial statistics, neuroimaging statistics, bioinformatics, clinical trials, survey and sampling design, and  lectures. For those, we had other faculty members in Biostatistics and Bioinformatics do guest lectures to tell us what they study and why it's interesting.

Some people were better at that than others... Dr. Risk (Neuroimaging), Dr. Benkeser (Machine Learning), and Mr. Paul Wiess who just has an MS (Survey and Sampling Techniques) were the most interesting, both at lecturing and had the most interesting topics. For those professors, we had multiple lectures about what they do and had labs that they led in the afternoon to explore. In the ML lab, we had a competition to see who could get the best predictions out of a dataset using the methods we learned in the morning. It was fun, engaging, competitive, and interesting. I got literally last place, but that was because I tried a method that no one else used, that was apparently not the best method for those particular data. Dr. Benkeser won, after spending 40 seconds on a new dataset he had never seen, using a method that he didn't teach to us. Well played, Dr. Benkeser.

Aside from lectures and labs, we also had "Exciting Faculty Adventures" that were occasionally exciting but only once was an adventure, by my estimation. These were usually about an hour, at the end of the day, where a faculty member would talk to us about what they did to get to where they are. Dr. Risk was a graduate student studying birds, another professor was studying economics, and one other was a physical therapist in Sri Lanka (I think, I might be conflating two different people). The ones that had faculty members who had interesting stories that were organized and prepared in advance were really fantastic, but there were a couple that were unprepared and those were hard to listen to. They were a really good way to see that you can become a faculty member at a major institution without having come from traditional path. 

On Wednesdays we had a lunch panel. They would cater food for lunch and bring in 1-4 guest panelists with a theme tying them together, and tell us about what they do, how they got into it, and what they could say about graduate school. I think these were the single most important thing for me in decided that I don't think I want a Ph.D. in Biostatistics, and made me want to pursue a MS/MPH/MSPH instead. The ones I thought were the best were the three different "jobs" panels, for academia, industry, and government jobs, and the collaboration panel where they talked about how a physician works with a biostatistician to publish good, important papers about medicine. That's what I want to do, is collaborate like that and make a difference that way. 

On Fridays we had field trips. We went to Grady Infectious Disease Program, CDC, Neuroscience Research Lab, Emory University Hospital, and the Task Force in Global Health. A few of these were useful for a career perspective, like the Grady IFD and the TFiGH, where we met actual statisticians and epidemiologists and learned what they actually do. Some were super interesting, especially the Neuroscience Research Lab, where we met a person who researches *something* about brains, and one of us got an MRI and we got to see what that looks like. I wasn't super impressed with the trip to the CDC. Like 40% of Emory graduates from their School of Public Health go to the CDC, so I thought we would see cool things about what those people do. Instead, we had a tour of the CDC museum. The museum... that literally anyone could walk up to and get a tour of. I was so disappointed. 

Most days we were done with classes and labs by 4 or 5 pm, and we had the nights to ourselves. We took advantage and explored the city. There were about 5 or 6 of us that were pretty close, and we played board games, watched movies, played sports, or hung out by the pool every day. We went to fireworks at the Coca-Cola museum thingy, the Georgia Aquarium, went on a hike, saw The Varsity, and did 300 other things. Probably the most annoying thing out of the entire program is that they put us all into rooms together, with 3-4 people per room, BUT THEY PUT THE ROOMS LIKE A MILE APART FROM EACH OTHER. If we wanted to socialize, it was a 10 minute walk and 2 elevators to get there. It's the ninth year of the SIBS program at Emory, how have they not figured that out by now?

I think the most important thing that happened is I found I want to go into Biostatistics instead of Statistics, and I want to get an MS/MPH/MSPH instead of a Ph.D. It seemed like that most places that hired PhD's also hired MS's. The time to a degree in Biostatistics is >5 years for almost everyone. I don't think I want to teach at the university level or lead my own research team, which seems to be the main reason for getting a PhD. All those reasons and more are things I found out at the SIBS program, and I probably would never have had the chance to learn those things until graduate school. I think the SIBS program saved me time, money, and mental health, and I'm very glad I had the chance to participate in it.