2021 R Conferences

It is not yet clear what lasting impact the Covid-19 pandemic will ultimately have on R conferences. We are still adapting to our inability to attend large events, and trying to make the best of the “silver lining” of virtual events which permit worldwide participation. The following is an attempt to list 2021 conferences that are likely to have interesting R content. I suspect that it is incomplete. If you know of an R Conference that is not mentioned, please add it to the comments section for this post.

Upcoming Events

NICAR 2021 (March 3 – 5), the Investigative Reporters & Editors Conference on data journalism should be well attended by data journalists using R for their everyday reporting.

CascadiaRConf 2021 (June 4 – 5), a jewel of a regional R conference for its first three years, was canceled in 2020. It is back this year as a virtual event. The Call for Presentations is open.

PHUSE US Connect 2021 (June 14 – 18) – PHUSE is a non-profit organization with the mission: “Sharing ideas, tools and standards around data, statistical and reporting technologies to advance the future of life sciences.” The conference which is focused on clinical data science is likely to have some interesting R content this year. The Call for Papers is open.

PSI 2021 Online (June 21 – 23) usually attracts six hundred or so statisticians from the pharmaceutical industry when the conference is held in person. PSI statisticians bring you Wonderful Wednesdays.

useR! 2021 (July 5 – 9) has an outstanding lineup of keynote speakers. The program is very likely to make US based attendees night-owls.

BioC 2021 (August 4 – 6) is the must attend event for anyone doing computational biology. Peruse the slides of past events to get a “rear view preview” of what to expect.

JSM 2021 Seattle (August 7 – 12), the mother of all statistics conferences, usually draws between 4,000 and 6,000 statisticians to in-person events. This organizers appear to be following some pretty optimistic Covid-19 vaccination rate models.

R/Medicine 2021 (August 27 – 29) has the dates, but no website yet. Don’t worry, the clinicians are big come from behind organizers. Last year’s conference was outstanding, and I expect an amazing event again this year.

R/Pharma 2021 organizers like to give R / Medicine organizers a head start, but a well placed source tells me that the conference will take place in Q3 or Q4. For the past three years, R/Pharma has been a bright star among R conferences where some of the best Shiny developers in the world meet and discuss their work.

EARL Conference 2021 (September 6 – 10), the premier R in industry event, will be online this year. The call for abstracts is already open.

NY R Conference 2021 is usually the perfect way to spend a couple of Manhattan Spring days. This year, the organizers are hoping for and in-person event in August or September if things go really well, but planning to surpass their spectacular 2020 virtual event if things don’t.

BIOP 2021 Rockville, MD (September 21 – 23) may be an in-person event. This workshop was originally an event for FDA statisticians but is now open to all statisticians interested in statistical practices for all areas regulated by the FDA.

noRth 2021 (September 29 30) is a regional conference out of the “Twin Cities” that is looking to virtually expand their reach within the R Community. Gabriela de Queiroz heads the list of confirmed speakers which includes new faces from IBM, Google, and the Federal Reserve.

Foss4g for OSGEO Buenos Aires (September 27 – October 2) is the annual conference of OSGeo, the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. Given the prominence of R in geospatial analysis this is sure to be an R heavy event. The conference will be online.

PHUSE EU Connect 21 (November 15 – 19) See above.

R Government has a reasonable chance of pulling off an in-person event (at least for people in the DC area) sometime in December if the region gets a break from Covid.

Earlier Events

rstudio::global (January 21) – The talks from this unique 24 hour, worldwide event are on line.

Evidence Synthesis and Meta-Analysis in R – The talks from this conference and hackathon which attracted 514 participants from 26 countries are online here.