I have been a member of EMR since its inception, asked to represent Greece in this endeavor of forming a region of the International Biometric Society (IBS) in the East Mediterranean. The first conference was going to be held in Haifa in early 2001, with David Farragi of Haifa University the main local organizer. However the intifada led to moving the venue to Athens, and I became suddenly the co-organizer. The EMR bi-annual conferences have been very successful ever since, bringing together the young Biostatisticians of the region and the more established generation of internationally renowned scientists. I was very honored to organize the 3rd EMR-IBS conference in Corfu, Greece (2005) and co-organize the 6th EMR-IBS conference in Crete, Greece (2011). The participation and support of past IBS presidents such as Geert Molenberghs, as well as famous Biostatisticians such as Harvard Professors Marvin Zelen and Steve Lagakos, was evident in all EMR conferences. Steve’s great contribution to the field and to EMR, is commemorated by the establishment of 3 student awards by Frontier Science Foundation-Hellas, that were so far presented during the 6th, 7th and 8th EMR-IBS conferences. For the first time in 2015, the Marvin Zelen invited lecture is established honoring his amazing achievements and support to EMR. The association with other IBS societies, specifically with other Mediterranean regional societies such as the Spanish-IBS and Italian-IBS ones, has been an initiative of my presidency along with Lupe Gomez and Maria-Grazia Valsecchi and has been successfully established by mutual participation in each region’s conferences.