Title:  Statistical Research and Graduate Education in the 21st Century:  Interdisciplinary Research

Presenter:  Dr. Jack D. Tubbs, Baylor University

This talk will focus on the ever expanding role that statistics and statisticians play at non Tier I research universities.  As smaller universities seek to improve their ranking among research institutions, resources demand that these institutions improve their emphasis upon inter/intra disciplinary research opportunities.  This emphasis not only affects the ways in which we evaluate our faculty but also the ways that we train our students.  I will present the preliminary results of one such project which is motivated by the growing widespread problem of water pollution with pharmaceuticals.  The work involves an analytical continuation of recent published studies that indicated that the pharmaceutical fluoxetine (Prozac), a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, is discharged in municipal wastewater treatment plant effluents to surface waters.  The study attempts to answer some of the questions that are not presently understood.  They are:  (1) the magnitude, duration and frequency of fluoxetine exposure in aquatic systems, (2) mechanistic toxicity of fluoxetine in non-target biota, including behavioral responses, and (3) an assessment of environmentally relevant fluoxetine concentrations is needed to characterize ecological community responses.