Welcome!

Hello from the R Consortium! This quarterly newsletter puts together the latest updates about our organization’s activities, the progress each working group has made, upcoming R related events and recording of past events. In short, all you need to know about the R Consortium! We hope you enjoy it. 

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📣 New Executive Director Announcement – Welcome back, Joseph Rickert!

The R Consortium is pleased to announce that Joseph Rickert has been appointed to the position of Executive Director reporting directly to the Board of Directors.

Joseph has been active in the R Community since he joined Revolution Analytics in 2009 and has held prominent, community-facing positions at both the R Consortium and RStudio (now renamed posit). He is deeply involved in multiple R Consortium technical working groups, is an organizer of the Bay Area useR Group (BARUG), and has been on the R/Medicine conference organizing committee since the first conference in 2018. Joseph served on the R Consortium Board of Directors from August 2016 to July 2023, serving as Chair from 2020.

Welcome, Joseph, to your new position!

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First Publicly Available R-Based Submission Package Submitted to FDA (Pilot 3)

The R Consortium is pleased to announce that on August 28, 2023, the R Submissions Working Group successfully submitted an R-based test submission pilot 3 package through the FDA eCTD gateway! The FDA CDER staff are now able to begin their evaluation process. All submission materials can be found at: https://github.com/RConsortium/submissions-pilot3-adam-to-fda 

Read more about this big accomplishment and work on Pilot 4 here.

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ISC Funded Projects Improving the R Ecosystem

R Consortium Funded Project Extendr Provides Rust Extensions for R

Andy Thomason, code performance consultant and lecturer at the University of London covering programming, physics and AI courses focused on game development, created an open source project to add Rust’s performance, reliability, and productivity to R. Andy created the Extendr package, a safe and user-friendly R extension interface for using Rust. The project was supported by a grant from the R Consortium.

R User Groups Are Active Around the World! 

Use of R in Non-Profit Social Policy Research in New York

Use of R for Pharma in Rosario, Argentina

Utilizing R for Reproducible Open Science Research in Tucson, Arizona

ISC Call for Proposals Wrap Up

Main announcement: Grants For R Language Infrastructure Projects Available Now!

The ISC is back with its second round of proposal calls and grant awards for 2023! The main objective is to strengthen the R ecosystem’s technical infrastructure and serve the R community better. Second Grant Cycle: September 1 to October 1, acceptance by November 1, contract by December 1.

If you missed the cycle this time, be sure to keep an eye out for next grant cycle in 2024!

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Working groups updates

R Certification

Change in Leadership and Ongoing activities In late August Joseph Korszun stepped down as Lead of R Certification Working Group. Joseph had contributed extensively in organizing and leading the efforts to compile and prepare for alpha release of Clinical Analyst examination. He had been critical in forming this working group and contributed extensively to ensure a Minimal Viable Product. Uday Preetham Palukuru has taken over the activities as lead. Joseph Rickert continues to provide guidance to the working group. Ongoing activities include:Clarification of various R Certification Exam levels expected to be part of final releaseClean-up of GitHub issues and re-prioritization of outstanding issues Completion of reviewer feedback regarding existing questionnaire pertaining to various exam levelsDiscussion with Certiverse on using .yml files for hosting draft alpha examIdentification of select candidates to preview the alpha release and gather feedback

Uday Preetham Palukurupreetham.palukuru@merck.com Joseph Rickert Joseph.Rickert@procogia.com Further information: https://github.com/RConsortium/R-Certification-WG

R Tables for Regulatory Submission (RTRS) 

Tables in Clinical Trials with R The version 1.0, the published version of the ebook, Tables in Clinical Trials with R is available at link: https://rconsortium.github.io/rtrs-wg.In this book we present various aspects of creating tables with the R language (R Core Team 2023) to analyze and report clinical trials data.  The working group will present its work in R/Pharma in October.

Gabe Becker: gabembecker@gmail.com Adrian Waddell: adrian.waddell@gene.com Joseph Rickert: joseph.rickert@rstudio.com Working Group github repository: https://github.com/RConsortium/rtrs-wg

R Validation Hub

Regulatory R Repository working group In July, the working group presented its work in the Basel R conference. The recording is available here: https://youtu.be/qqfteqh9kXw?si=2sJwP079Tj0toHY4 In summary, after collecting requirements and gathering consensus on key assumptions to build on, the team is now getting ready to start its first MVP. Would you like to join? Check out our Benefits of participating PDF link	Coline Zeballos: coline.zeballos@gmail.com
The R Validation Hub was selected to give a talk at the upcoming R/Pharma virtual conference on October 24-26. Register here and see you there!	Coline Zeballos: coline.zeballos@gmail.com  Juliane Manitz: juliane.manitz@emdserono.com
The slides from Doug’s Posit::conf 2023 Pharma Round Table presentation are available here: https://pharmar.github.io/events-positconf2023/#/title-slide	Doug Kelkhoff: doug.kelkhoff@gmail.com

Submissions

You’ve missed a recent event? 

R/Basel, a useR! regional Conference July 21st, 2023, Roche Basel Campus
New York R Conference – Held workshops from July 11-12 and Conference from July 13-14  2023
Cascadia R Conference – Taking place in Seattle, Washington from Saturday, August 19, 2023
Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) – August 5 – 10, 2023, in Toronto, Canada
R Project Sprint August 30 – September 1, 2023, Warwick UK
Posit::conf including workshop: Leveraging & Contributing to the Pharmaverse for Clinical Trial Reporting in R was held this week in Chicago with Roche folks involved – see teaser video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOOiNG2t-Dc

Follow the R Consortium on Social Media – We need you!

In this section, we highlight a few opportunities for getting more involved with the R Consortium.