In an effort to streamline and centralize statistical consulting activities on campus, a new Applied Statistics Laboratory (ASL) will launch July 2011. The main objectives of this venture are to provide improved statistical services to groups preparing grant proposals, direct faculty involvement from the Departments of Statistics and Biostatistics for study design and data analysis throughout UK, foster collaborative research between scholars who develop quantitative methodology and those who use such methodology in their work, and to become a resource which may be referenced in institutional support for larger grants, in addition to direct statistical support typically included in such grants.

“We envision improved breadth and quality of statistical support for scholarship across the University,” said Arne Bathke, Founding Director of the ASL, but he also points out that the services provided by the ASL will not substitute for basic statistical education that is provided in undergraduate and graduate Statistics service courses offered by the Departments of Statistics and Biostatistics.

The ASL will be supported by two experienced M.Sc. statistician staff members, Adam Lindstrom and Candace Brancato, as well as several graduate students from the Departments of Statistics and Biostatistics. The laboratory will be led by Director Arne Bathke and Associate Directors Constance Wood and Heather Bush, who have been involved in all levels of statistical consulting and collaboration and who have extensive experience communicating statistical results to non-statisticians, including collaborative publications and grants.

Other faculty members in the Department of Statistics and Biostatistics may also be enlisted in these analyses, encouraging the development of collaborative grant applications and sustained research collaborations. The faculty members of these departments have expertise in the full array of statistical methods, such as quality control, survival analysis, social science methods, multivariate methods, spatial statistics, nonparametric statistics, experimental design, Bayesian methods, computational statistics, phylogenetics, bioinformatics, and clinical trials.

The ASL will function as a restricted “free access” statistical lab where faculty and graduate students can seek help with data analysis, statistical computing, and experimental design. However, colleges whose faculty wish to utilize ASL services are asked to provide an appropriate amount of seed funding that will facilitate the handling of a certain capacity of routine requests from their faculty and graduate students.

For those interested in using the ASL, a consultation request may be submitted by emailing ASL@uky.edu. In January 2012, the ASL will move into renovated space in the Multidisciplinary Science Building.

“The intent of the ASL is not to alter the larger grant enterprise which is already under the supervision of faculty in Statistics or Biostatistics,” said Arnold Stromberg, Chair of the Department of Statistics. “Many projects will remain with their current reporting structure. The ASL is rather intended as an incubator for small to medium sized projects. The ASL will provide a central location where researchers can acquire their needed statistical support, with faculty supervision, and grow their projects into larger funded enterprises.”