Name: Modern R: Infrastructure, Interfaces, and Ideas
Start: 2025-03-28T17:00:00+01:00
End: 2025-03-28T19:00:00+01:00

**First part:**
**Building an R API for Randomization: Challenges and Insights from ‘Unbiased’**
**Speaker:** Kamil Sijko, Transition Technologies Science
How far can you push R when building a production-grade API? In this talk, I’ll share the journey of creating **Unbiased**, an API designed for patient randomization in clinical trials. While it’s built in R using **Plumber**, making it robust, validated, and developer-friendly posed several challenges.
I’ll cover key technical aspects, including:

* **Validating a randomization algorithm in R** – when multiple agents are involved, standard testing approaches fall short.
* **Scaling an R-based API** – tuning performance, Dockerizing, and making it production-ready.
* **Developer-first approach** – why we designed Unbiased for external developers, not just R users.
* **Open source in a commercial setting** – lessons learned from making a company-backed tool open to the community.
* **Feedback from real-world use** – what we learned and what’s next.

Whether you’re an R developer, data scientist, or someone interested in API development, this session will offer practical insights and challenges from taking R beyond data analysis and into production.
Join us for a discussion on what works, what doesn’t, and where R shines (or struggles) in real-world API development!

**Second part:**
**Fresh Air in R: New Tools, Smarter Workflows, and What’s Emerging**
**Speaker**: Tymoteusz Makowski, Appsilon
Join us for a fast-paced overview of what’s brewing in the R ecosystem — from brand new tools like {air} (a blazing-fast code formatter), {ark} (a new R kernel for Jupyter), and {treesitter} (enabling syntax-aware tooling), to reliable but underused helpers like rig (for managing R versions), {box} (modular code), and pre-commit hooks for better project hygiene.
We’ll also touch on how experimental packages like {gander} and {ellmer} explore the intersection of R and AI — from code introspection to language models. Finally, we’ll hint at what’s starting to stir around observability and diagnostics — an area where early activity suggests R may soon be part of the broader telemetry conversation.
Expect practical context, working links, and space for questions. This won’t be a tutorial — it’s a glimpse of where things are moving.

Kamil Sijko

R Users & R-Ladies Warsaw (Spotkania Entuzjastów R)

R User Groups

Forum MedTech

R Consortium

Technology

Big Data

Machine Learning

Data Analytics

Data Visualization

R Project for Statistical Computing

Data Mining

Data Science

Programming in R

Applied Statistics

Statistical Computing

Open Source

Predictive Analytics

Artificial Intelligence

Business Intelligence

Data Management

**Kamil Sijko** is the Head of Clinical Data Science at Transition Technologies Science, where he leads projects at the intersection of statistics, clinical trials, and software development. With a background in social psychology and data science, he has worked across academia, government research, and industry.
Kamil has extensive experience in developing statistical tools, AI-driven clinical applications, and R-based solutionsfor healthcare and pharma. He has been involved in projects ranging from site selection for clinical trials to live anomaly detection in patient data. Most recently, he co-led the development of Unbiased, an R-based API for patient randomization in clinical trials, navigating the challenges of building a production-ready, open-source tool in a commercial setting.

**Tymoteusz Makowski**, Full-Stack Developer at Appsilon
Hey 👋 I'm a senior full-stack developer at Appsilon, always excited to learn new things. Lately, I’ve been diving into CSS and vanilla JavaScript (on top of R/Shiny, of course!), but over the years, I've worked with a mix of languages like R, Go, and TypeScript.
At Appsilon, I wear a few hats—I lead projects, guide technical decisions, and occasionally jump into innovation and mentoring. My passion for learning and exploring new technologies helps me bring fresh ideas to the team.



R Users & R-Ladies Warsaw (Spotkania Entuzjastów R)

Modern R: Infrastructure, Interfaces, and Ideas

R Users & R-Ladies Warsaw (Spotkania Entuzjastów R)

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