Submit a Proposal

Interested in participating in the 2017 ASA Biopharmaceutical Section Regulatory-Industry Statistics Workshop? Parallel session, short course, and town hall proposal submissions will be accepted through December 2, 2016. This year, up to eight half-day short courses will be available, though full-day short courses may be considered.


Submit/Edit Proposal


Roundtable discussion topic proposals will be accepted January 4 – March 15, 2017.

Poster proposals will be accepted January 4 – March 30, 2017.

How to Participate

Workshop Guidelines

Coming soon!

Writing a Session Proposal

The text portion of your submitted proposal should include a paragraph or two explaining the topic/concept, including a description of why this session is relevant. Has this topic been presented at conferences before? If yes, why should this material be presented again? Proposals that include novel and important information, especially if not previously presented at this workshop, will be given a higher priority for acceptance. Often, several proposals are submitted for popular topic areas (e.g., adaptive designs and oncology). Make your session proposal stand out by describing how it would be different from others in the same general topic.

Names of potential speakers may be included in the proposal, even though they need not be contacted. If speakers are contacted about the possibility of speaking, it should be made clear that the session has not yet been finalized or accepted; the additional session organizers assigned for the session at the organizing meeting may have suggestions that will result in a more balanced session.

Note that a person cannot be both a chair/organizer and a speaker/discussant in the same session. Proposals submitted not following this guideline will be considered and may be accepted with the expectation that the final session will follow this guideline.

A few proposals will be selected as back-up sessions to be included in the final program only if other approved sessions do not come together. Prospective speakers should be notified if their session is a back-up and could be canceled.

Parallel Session Approval Process and Voting at the Organizing Meeting

Organizers submitting similar proposals may be contacted prior to the organizing meeting about merging their ideas into one proposal. Organizers may choose to keep their session proposals separate, but combining may increase the chance of one being selected. Note that steering committee members also may submit session proposals, but not for topic areas they are responsible for reviewing.

An important step in maintaining the value of this workshop is that additional organizers are assigned to aid every original session proposer to achieve a balance of speakers. This usually results in 3–4 session organizers, some from industry and some from the FDA. Because of these additional session organizers, the original session proposal can evolve somewhat, while staying true to its specific topic.

After the Steering Committee has sorted the session proposals into topic areas and performed a first round of reviews, the proposals chosen as finalists will be presented at the organizing meeting. The Steering Committee may preselect a few outstanding proposals for the final program and remove session proposals not meeting the submission criteria. However, the majority of the session proposals will be selected via voting at the organizing meeting. Only those present at the organizing meeting will vote. Each attendee will be allowed to vote for their 10 favorite session proposals, and only one vote per person is permitted for any one proposal.

Key Dates