Welcome!

Welcome to the ENAR 2027 Spring Meeting tto be held March 14–17, 2027, in Boston!

Our theme this year is “Statistics in Action: Advancing Evidence for Grassroots Health and Policy Change.” It reflects something I believe deeply about our field: statistics is at its most powerful when rigorous methods connect with consequential questions and help improve the world around us.

The ENAR 2027 program will celebrate the extraordinary breadth of modern biostatistics while also asking us to think about where and how our work can make a difference. You will find cutting-edge methodological research alongside applications to pressing scientific and societal problems, opportunities to strengthen foundational skills, and conversations about how we can communicate and collaborate more effectively across disciplines and beyond academia. Whether you work in academia, government, industry, health care, or another setting—and whether you are a student attending your first ENAR meeting or someone who has been coming for decades—I hope you will find something that challenges, inspires, and connects you.

I am particularly excited about several highlights of this year’s meeting. My Presidential Spotlight panel session, “Evidence on Trial: Statistics and the Law,” will explore the important and sometimes underappreciated role of statistics in the law, bringing together law school deans, practicing attorneys, and statisticians who have served as expert witnesses to discuss how statistical evidence can inform legal reasoning and decision-making. We will also celebrate the 2027 recipients of the Dionne Price Early Career PIONEER Award and the Team Science Award, and continue our investment in the next generation of our profession through our Early Career Workshop Series. And, for the first time, we will host a lightning poster session especially for undergraduate participants, giving some of our youngest attendees an opportunity to share their work and become part of the ENAR community.

I am especially delighted that the 2027 Presidential Invited Address will be given by Dr. Joseph Hogan, Chair of Biostatistics at Brown, whose work exemplifies the power of biostatistics to bridge methodological innovation and important real-world questions.

Of course, ENAR is about much more than the scientific program. Over four days, the Spring Meeting offers countless opportunities to learn from one another and to build community through invited and contributed sessions, tutorials and short courses, roundtables, student activities, professional development programs, career opportunities, mixers, and the conversations that happen in hallways, over coffee, and around dinner tables. Some of the most enduring collaborations, mentorships, and friendships in our field begin through exactly these kinds of encounters.

ENAR is committed to cultivating a culture of inclusion, professionalism, and civil discourse in which ideas can be exchanged openly and respectfully. We ask all participants to uphold ENAR’s Meeting Conduct Policy and to help us create a meeting where everyone feels welcome and able to participate fully.

A meeting of this size and scope is truly a community effort. I am enormously grateful to the many volunteers who give their time, energy, and creativity to ENAR throughout the year and especially to those serving on our program, education, professional development, awards, student, IDEA, CENS, RAB, RECOM, social media, and local organizing committees. My particular thanks go to our Program Co-Chairs, Drs. Linda Valeri and Arman Oganisian, and to our Local Arrangements Co-Chairs, Drs. Fatema Shafie Khorassani and Nima Hejazi, as well as to our ENAR management team (shoutout to Rachel and Sara), for the tremendous work that goes into creating this meeting.

It is an enormous privilege to serve as ENAR President for 2027. ENAR has been an important part of my professional life for many years. It is where I have learned from colleagues, watched students and early-career statisticians find their footing, reconnected with old friends, made new ones, and been reminded year after year of the remarkable range of people and ideas that make up our field. I hope ENAR 2027 gives each of you some of those same experiences.

Most of all, I hope you leave Boston with new ideas, new connections, and renewed enthusiasm for the many ways biostatistics can make a difference.

I can’t wait to welcome you to Boston in March!

Nandita Mitra
ENAR 2027 President