Biostatistics Seminar: Genetic Data

Robert Gentleman, PhD, will present a seminar titled, “Using genetic data to identify potential causal disease genes.”

Dr. Gentleman’s career has spanned more than 30 years. Prior to 23andMe, he was a Director at Genentech. At the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, he was the Head of the Computational Biology Department. Dr. Gentleman served as a professor at Harvard University, the University of Auckland, and the University of Waterloo. During his tenure at Harvard, Dr. Gentleman founded the Bioconductor Project, an open source, open development software project to provide tools for the analysis and comprehension of high-throughput genomic data.

This seminar will discuss some of the problems that arise when using genome wide association data to identify potentially causal genes. I will focus on the statistical issues that arise when identifying variants that associate with changes in gene expression (so-called eQTLs). Especially aspects of identifying unknown batch effects and identifying multiple signals per gene.” Dr. Gentleman’s career has spanned more than 30 years. During his tenure as Professor at Harvard University, Dr. Gentleman founded the Bioconductor Project, an open source, open development software project to provide tools for the analysis and comprehension of highthroughput genomic data.