William Valdar, PhD

About

I run a statistical genetics laboratory interested the relationship between genes and complex disease. We have a particular focus on the use of genetically diverse experimental model organism populations, but also, where suitable intersections arise, develop and apply methods and to refine genetic inference in human populations. Specific foci include: simultaneous modeling and estimation of multiple heritable components of a complex phenotype (eg, additive, dominance, parent-of-origin, epistasis, sex-specific effects); characterizing model uncertainty in multiple quantitative trait loci (QTL) genome-wide association; modeling genetic effects on phenotypic variability; modeling gene by treatment effects (GxT), including GxE; the design of mouse resource populations for medical research; and general statistical methods for analyzing data from Multiparental genetic reference populations (MPPs). In particular, my laboratory has made advances in the design and analysis of experiments on the mouse Collaborative Cross (CC), the Heterogeneous Stock (HS) mice and rats, the mouse Diversity Outbred (DO) population, among others.

Research Interests:

Bayesian Methods, Statistical Genetics

Education