Funding is sought for the Summer Institute in Statistical Genetics (SISG) at the University of Washington, specifically for student participant scholarships and instructor stipends. The SISG has been held every year since 1996 and has now served over 2,800 participants. It provides introductory workshops in current statistical methodology over a range of areas of genetics: animal, evolutionary, human, plant, population, and quantitative with a substantial emphasis on human disease mapping and characterization. The SISG also provides introductory workshops in molecular genetics for statisticians and other quantitative scientists. Participants are drawn from academia, industry and government. Instructors are drawn from the University of Washington and 20 other institutions. The SISG is directed by Bruce Weir, Professor and Chair of the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Washington. The 2009 version of SISG will offer the following modules: 1. Probability and Statistical Inference;2. Molecular Genetics;3. computing for Statistical Genetics;4. Interpreting DNA Evidence;5. Regression and Analysis of Variance;6. Natural Population Genetic Data Analysis;7. MCMC for Genetics;8. Molecular Phylogenetics;9. Quantitative Genetics;10. Human Population Genetic Data Analysis;11. Inferences of Relationships and Relatedness;12. Comparative Genomics and Molecular Evolution;13. QTL Mapping;14. Mixed Models;15. Human Association Mapping;16. Coalescent Theory;17. Advanced QTL Mapping;18. Plant and Animal Association Mapping;19. Genetic Epidemiology and Clinical Trials;20. Functional Genomics and Proteomic Data. This award will support 60 student participants and a similar request will be made to the National Science Foundation.
The study of human disease is becoming increasingly quantitative, especially when the genetic basis of disease is considered. The enormous amounts of genetic data now being generated in the hopes of locating and characterizing the genes that affect disease susceptibility and severity require increasingly sophisticated statistical analyses. The Summer Institute in Statistical Genetics provides statistical training to geneticists and other scientists to allow them to analyze data pertaining to human disease and other basic science questions.
