UK Causal Inference Meeting 2016

The UK Causal Inference Meeting was held at the school 12-15 April 2016, organised under the umbrella of the Centre for Statistical Methodology. The theme of the meeting was “Causal Inference in Health, Economic and Social Sciences”. We had 244 participants from 18 different countries and 10 invited speakers, all world leaders in causal inference.

Some highlights included inspiring keynote addresses from Jamie Robins (Harvard) and Guido Imbens (Stanford). These, together with the other invited speakers and 24 contributed oral presentations, covered a breadth of methodological topics and a wide range of applications, including genetic epidemiology, social networks, HIV, race, feeding regimes in Pediatric Intensive Care Units. A thought-provoking talk by Miguel Hernan (Harvard) on “does water kill?” referred to the Broad Street cholera outbreak of 1854 to emphasise the need for carefully specifying our causal questions.

We also had 48 posters on display, and a new feature of this meeting was that each poster presenter gave an “express talk” on his/her poster in the session entitled “Just a minute”. It was incredible how the essence of each poster could be so effectively communicated in such little time. Maybe all seminars should be “just a minute” from now on?

One of the invited speakers, Maya Petersen (Berkeley), said that the meeting “made me very enthusiastic for the future of our field!” and another, Eric Tchetgen Tchetgen (Harvard), said that this had been “the best conference I have ever attended”. It was indeed an exceptionally inspiring meeting for those of us who love this field, mainly thanks to the very high quality of the presentations but also the positive atmosphere.

This event has been the highlight of our Centre and a very inspiring experience!

Some photographs of the event are available here.