The Center for Statistics (CenStat) of UHasselt, together with the Biostatistical Center of the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, form the Interuniversity Institute for Biostatistics and statistical Bioinformatics (IBioStat). CenStat is a prestigious scientific and educational centre specialising in biostatistics and bioinformatics. Currently, there are 13 full professors, 21 post-doctoral and senior researchers, and over 30 pre-doctoral researchers at iBioStat, an internationally recognized research centre in the domain of (bio)statistics and statistical bioinformatics. Its expertise is clearly proven through a large number of publications in peer reviewed literature, several monographs on such topics as statistical modelling of complex data, surrogate endpoint validation, or modelling microarray data in early drug development. CenStat hosts an internationally recognized programme of Master studies in statistics, with biostatistics and statistical bioinformatics as trajectories. Recent involvement in research and innovation projects: 2011-2015 BRAVO (Biomarker Retrospective Analysis for Validation Optimisation): a project organized under the EurotransBio initiative, aiming to develop novel statistical approaches that would increase the efficiency of clinical validation studies of biomarker-based diagnostic tests; 2012-2017 MIMOmics: an FP7 project with the objective of developing robust and efficient statistical methods for integrated analysis of metabolomics, glycomics, proteomic and genomic datasets in large studies; 2013-2016 IDEAL (Integrated DEsign and AnaLysis of small population group trials). 2011-2014 QSTAR (Quantitative Structure-Transcription-Assay Relationships) involves a multidisciplinary team of industrial and academic partners from the US and Europe. This consortium is laying the foundation for the integration of three data types that are used throughout the drug discovery process: biological assay data, molecular profiling data and chemical structure information. Another excellent example of CenStat's collaboration with parties representing the pharmaceutical industry, technology and the research sector is the ExaScience Lab (2013-2015) dedicated to investigate High Performance Computing (HPC) applications in life sciences. CenStat will assist as a source of methodological expertise in the design and analysis of experiments undertaken by PhD students. CenStat will be involved in the organization of PhD courses in statistics and statistical bioinformatics, at which PhD researchers will acquire necessary methodological knowledge to help them in planning and analysing the experiments within the scope of their PhD research. The team’s resources are capable of offering the right environment as a strong contribution to the proposed research, training and innovation activities. Key scientists: Prof. Tomasz Burzykowski, Prof. Ziv Shkedy and Dr Jürgen Claesen.
