Dana Farber Data Science | Training Sessions

The Marvin Zelen Memorial Symposium is a flagship annual conference promoting data science in the public sphere. Each year features a new theme that is current in the field of biostatistics and features speakers from across the country who are experts in their fields.

Previous themes include:

Data-Driven Controversies in Science
Health Disparities in Cancer
Machine Learning inMedical Imaging: From New Techniques to Clinical Translation
Data Visualization
Data Science in Biomedical Research: Learning from Other Disciplines
Contemporary Statistics Challenges in Clinical Reseearch
Clinical Trials in the Era of Precision Medicine

YouTube Playlist

Marvin Zelen Symposium 2025: Data-Driven Controversies in Science

Friday April 4, 2025
1:00-5:30PM

Agenda

Forecasting the Future: How Accurate Are Our Climate Change Models?

Gavin A. Schmidt, PhD, (Affiliated with the Climate School at Columbia University), Successes and Challenges in Global Climate Modeling

Auroop Ganguly, PhD, (College of Engineering Distinguished Professor at Northeastern University), Opportunities and Challenges in Data Sciences for Earth Systems Sciences and Engineering

Unraveling COVID-19: Origins, Interventions, and Lessons Learned

Marc Lipsitch, DPhil (Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health), What Were The Impacts Of Nonpharmaceutical Control Interventions on COVID-19 and Consequences

Alina Chan, PhD, (Previous scientific advisor in the Broad Institute), The Case for a Laboratory Origin of Covid-19

Beyond the Hype: Unveiling the Limits of Machine Learning in Science and Medicine

Sayash Kapoor, (Senior Fellow at Mozilla), The Promise and Pitfalls of AI in Science

Arjun Manrai, PhD, (Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School), Statistical Considerations for Medical Artificial Intelligence, Old and New

2024

2024 Marvin Zelen Symposium: Health Disparities and Cancer

Speakers (in order of appearance)

Adewole Adamson, MD, MPP, (Assistant Professor, Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin), AI and Melanoma Disparities

Jinani C Jayasekera Devadoss, PhD (Earl Stadtman investigator in the Division of Intramural Research, National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities), Personalized Clinical Decision Tools to Support Equitable Breast Cancer Care

Cynthia Dwork, PhD (Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science, Harvard University): Individuals, Groups, Indistinguishability, and Loss: 15 Years of Algorithmic Fairness in 20 Minutes

Bogdan Pasaniuc, PhD, (Professor, University of California Los Angeles), Polygenic Risk Scoring in Personalized Medicine: Promises and Challenges

Carmen E. Guerra, MD, MSCE, FACP (Ruth C. and Raymond G. Perelman Professor of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania), The (Mis)use of Race and Ethnicity in Biomedical Research

Nate Fillmore, PhD (VA Boston Healthcare System and Harvard Medical School), Health Disparities and Cancer in the National VA Healthcare System

2023

2023 Marvin Zelen Symposium: Machine Learning in Medical Imaging: From New Techniques to Clinical Translation

Speakers (in order of appearance)

Marzyeh Ghassemi (Assistant Professor at MIT in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and Institute for Medical Engineering & Science (IMES), and a Vector Institute faculty member holding a Canadian CIFAR AI Chair and Canada Research Chair. She holds MIT affiliations with the Jameel Clinic and CSAIL), Designing Machine Learning Processes For Equitable Health Systems

Jonathan Chen (Instructor in Pathology, MGH and HMS), Multicellular Networks: Immunity Hubs in Human NSCLC

Jayashree Kalpathy-Cramer (Professor, University of Colorado, MGH, and HMS, chief of the Division of Artificial Medical Intelligence in Ophthalmology at the University of Colorado (CU) School of Medicine), Opportunities and Challenges for Medical Imaging AI – Lessons from Oncology and Ophthalmology

Bill Lotter (Member of the Faculty, DFCI and HMS), AI for Mammography: From Algorithms to Clinical Integration

Shantanu Singh (Principal Investigator and Senior Group Leader, Broad Institute), Fortune-telling with Images: Painting Cells for Discovering Drugs

Andy Beck (Co-founder & CEO, Path AI), AI-powered Tumor Microenvironment Characterization

Polina Golland (Professor in the EECS Department and a principal investigator in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT), Learning to Read x-ray: Applications to Heart Failure Monitoring

2022

2022 Marvin Zelen Symposium: Data Visualization

Speakers (in order of appearance)

Alvitta Ottley (Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis), The Case for Precision Visualization

Jeffrey Heer (Jerre D. Noe Endowed Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington), Authoring and Visualizing Multiverse Analyses

Amanda Cox (Head of special data projects at USAFacts), End of an Era

Hadley Wickham (Chief Scientist at RStudio, and an Adjunct Professor of Statistics at the University of Auckland, Stanford University, and Rice University), Recent Advances in the ggplot2 Ecosystem

Alberto Cairo (Knight Chair in Visual Journalism at the School of Communication of the University of Miami, What You Design is Not What People See

Jessica Hullman (Ginni Rometty Associate Professor of Computer Science at Northwestern University), Visualizations as Model Checks

Lace Padilla (Assistant Professor in the Cognitive and Information Sciences Department at the University of California Merced), Impacts of COVID-19 Uncertainty Visualizations