Statistical Methods for

Multi-Stage Optimal

Decision-Making

(Dr. Abdus Wahed)

Andrew Balas lecture

Andrew Balas lecture is named after Dr. Andrew J. Balas ( UWEC Math Department Chair, 2003 to 2007).

For more details: https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/biostat/people/faculty/abdus-wahed-phd

Dr. Abdus S. Wahed

Dr. Abdus S. Wahed is a Professor and the Associate Chair of the Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology at the University of Rochester. Prior to assuming this role in 2023, he spent over 20 years as a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, where he also served as the Director of the PhD Graduate Program in Biostatistics for nine years. He has been teaching statistics to graduate and undergraduate students at different institutions for over 30 years. Dr. Wahed’s primary research focuses on statistical methods for Sequential Multiple Assignment Randomized Trials (SMART) and dynamic treatment regimes. He has published over 130 papers in top statistics and clinical journals, including JASA, Biometrics, Biometrika, Biostatistics, JRSS-C, Statistics in Medicine, and Lifetime Data Analysis. He has delivered over 110 invited presentations to national and international conferences or institutions. For his contribution to research in Biostatistics, Dr. Wahed received the ASA Pittsburgh Chapter Statistician of the Year Award in 2014. He was inducted as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2015, an honor acknowledging his significant advancements in statistics and biostatistics, particularly in the field of treatment sequencing.

Dr. Wahed has previously served as the President of the Pittsburgh Chapter of the American Statistical Association (ASA), as the Vice-Chair of the Committee on International Relations in Statistics of ASA, and as the Chair of the COPSS Award Committee of the Committee of the Presidents of Statistical Societies. He is currently an Associate Editor of Biometrics, Biostatistics, and the Journal of Statistical Theory and Practice. For more details: https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/biostat/people/faculty/abdus-wahed-phd

Abstract:

Statistical Methods for Multi-Stage Optimal Decision-Making

Decisions made at a given stage of a process can constrain or enable future actions, thereby influencing long-term outcomes. In many scientific domains, such as precision medicine, public policy, and economics, the quality of an initial decision cannot be evaluated solely by its immediate effect, but rather by its consequences across an entire sequence of future decision points. For example, an initially modestly effective chemotherapy option may lead to improved long-term survival when followed by an appropriate salvage regimen. This motivates statistical methods that explicitly account for downstream interventions, evolving covariate processes, and future decision rules. Within the framework of dynamic treatment regimes and reinforcement learning, estimation of optimal sequential decisions requires modeling both immediate and future conditional gains or rewards. In this talk, we will discuss Q-learning as a statistical learning approach for estimating optimal dynamic treatment regimes. I will emphasize its interpretation, implementation, and theoretical properties, as well as its strengths and limitations relative to alternative methods. The goal is to illustrate how forward-looking statistical decision strategies can yield improved long-term outcomes.

Dr. Andrew J. Balas joined the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire faculty in 1984 after holding a faculty position at Rutgers for four years. He later served as Department Chair from 2003 to 2007.

Dr. Balas, who as a graduate of the University of Michigan, earned a Ph. D. from the University of California-Berkeley. He passed away at age 63 on March 19, 2008, after a yearlong battle with lymphoma.

Andrew J. Balas had a deep interest in mathematics and mathematics education. He published research articles in the area of complex manifolds.