Power Priors for Leveraging Historical Data: Methods and Applications

Presented by Ming-Hui Chen, University of Connecticut

Thursday, March 30, 2023
8:00 PM ET
AUST 434

Historical data or real-world data (RWD) are often available in clinical trials, genetics, health care, psychology, environmental health, engineering, economics, and business. The power prior has emerged as a useful class of informative priors for a variety of situations in which historical data or RWD are available. In this presentation, an overview of the development of the power prior and its applications to date is provided. The theoretical properties, variations in the formulation, and the amount of information to leverage are elaborated. Some case studies are presented to demonstrate usefulness of the power priors in real applications. Finally, the ongoing research and the future research direction on this topic are discussed.

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Ming-Hui Chen is Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor and Head of Department of Statistics at University of Connecticut (UConn). He obtained his PhD in Statistics from Purdue University in 1993. He was elected to Fellow of International Society for Bayesian Analysis in 2016, Fellow of Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 2007, and Fellow of American Statistical Association in 2005. He received the University of Connecticut AAUP Research Excellence Award in 2013, the UConn College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) Excellence in Research Award in the Physical Sciences Division in 2013, the University of Connecticut Alumni Association's University Award for Faculty Excellence in Research and Creativity (Sciences) in 2014, the ICSA Distinguished Achievement Award in 2020, and the Distinguished Science Alumni Award from Purdue University in 2023. He has published 450+ peer-reviewed journal articles and five books including two advanced graduate-level books on Bayesian survival analysis and Monte Carlo methods in Bayesian computation. He has supervised 41 PhD students. He served as Executive Director of ICSA (2007-2010), President of ICSA (2013), President of New England Statistical Society (2018-2020), and the 2022 JSM Program Chair. Currently, he is Co Editor-in-Chief of Statistics and Its Interface, inaugurated Co Editor-in-Chief of New England Journal of Statistics in Data Science, and an Associate Editor for several other statistical journals.