History

At the ISCB 2007 conference in Alexandropoulos, Greece, after a session on vaccines and surveillance, vaccines statisticians were discussing the presentations, and realized they had been working on similar problems and dealing with similar issues for some time, without knowing that others were also. The conversation was summed up when someone said "I always knew there must be other statisticians working on these questions, and now I've finally found them".

Out of the meeting, an informal email discussion developed - about twenty-five participants exchanging ideas about how statisticians working in vaccines research could share their experiences and coordinate their efforts. The decision was reached to ask the ISCB to form a Vaccines sub-committee that would include representatives from academia, industry and regulatory agencies, and from North America and Europe. The initial members of the committee were Ivan Chan (Merck), Andrew Dunning (Sanofi Pasteur, chair), Paddy Farrington (Open University UK), Marc Fourneau (GSK), Allen Izu (Novartis), Jingyee Kou (FDA), Larry Moulton (Johns Hopkins) and Jos Nauta (Solvay).

The proposal was approved by the ISCB officers in March 2008 and ratified by the ISCB Annual Meeting during the conference in Copenhagen in August 2008.