Statistics, Music, and BEBPA
Notes from College Park
From March 23 to March 26, 2026, the BEBPA US Conference took place in College Park, Maryland, just outside Washington — and of course Stegmann Systems was there too.
This year was a small milestone for us: for the first time since COVID, two of us attended the US conference together again. In the years before, Ralf had always made the trip on his own.
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The first evening
Music and statistics
The conference more or less started the moment we arrived at the hotel. We were quickly picked up by the BEBPA staff at the hotel bar, which turned out to be the perfect place for the first interesting discovery of the event: Pierre Lebrun is not only an excellent statistician, but also the bassist in the Belgian band Smokin'!.
Day one
Statistics, statistics, and more statistics
When it came to the actual conference program, the first day was dedicated to statistics — and it showed that there is definitely value in continuing to give statistics a strong platform at future BEBPA conferences. There is certainly no shortage of topics worth discussing.
At the same time, I am not sure this necessarily requires a separate extra conference day again. Four full conference days felt a little long overall.
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My personal highlight
FDA workshop
For me, the FDA workshop on the second day was the clear highlight of the conference — and not only because we are currently working on a method validation package for PLA.
In several talks, statistician Jennifer Kirk offered detailed insights into how the FDA supports and reviews the validation of biological assays, but also how closely it is involved even during earlier stages of assay development.
Day four
Even more statistics
The statistics session later on the final day was somewhat less compelling for me than some of the earlier presentations. Perceval Sondag gave a very eloquent talk on Bayesian statistics, but for my taste it remained a little too broad.
In Steven Walfish’s presentation, I found it difficult at times to identify the main point or direction of the talk clearly. Since both speakers had already given stronger talks on the first day, this session felt slightly less memorable overall.
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The penultimate evening
Networking the night away
Another highlight was the Networking Reception on the penultimate evening. As a Platinum Exhibitor, Ralf once again opened the event with a very nice presentation — and let’s just say it turned into a rather long evening after that.
