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SuSTaIn Events Time for Causality workshop Aims and Objectives Invited Speakers Programme (pdf) Abstracts (pdf) Participants (pdf) Slides for talks (protected) Photos

Aims and Objectives

The aim of this workshop is to bring together researchers who are interested in statistical methodology for causal inference and decision making from time-dependent data and modelling of dynamic systems. We envisage that this interest can take various forms. For instance, in many practical applications we may want to evaluate the effect of a strategy for a sequence of decisions, e.g. treatment decisions for patients with a chronic or long-term disease. Moreover, we might be interested in finding a good or optimal decision strategy. Often, the evaluation and optimisation may be hampered by the presence not only of sampling variability but also of time-varying confounding and specialised methods are called for. There may also be applications where possible interventions in the system are less specific and researchers are interested in modelling or finding the dynamic causal structure, such as for example between events in cellular reaction systems.
The following is a list of possible topics relevant to this workshop:
  • Fundamentals of causal inference from longitudinal / time-dependent data
  • Methods for dealing with time-varying confounders: inverse probability weighting, structural nested model, g-computation, Bayesian predictive inference
  • Optimal dynamic decision strategies
  • Control theory and machine learning
  • Continuous-time dynamic modelling
  • Applications, such as duration and timing of therapy for cancer or HIV patients, controlling of blood index by anticoagulant treatment, maintenance therapies for chronic conditions
The workshop was organised by Vanessa Didelez, Robin Henderson and Will Havercroft. You can contact them by email at
time-causality-organisers 'AT' sympa.bristol.ac.uk.

Fionnuala Hill, SuSTaIn Coordinator, School of Mathematics, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1TW, UK.
Email link Tel: +44 (0)117 928 8664, Fax: +44 (0)117 928 7999