A motivating force behind my statistical and collaborative research interests is a desire to come to a better understanding of human diseases. I am committed to working to use statistical techniques to design studies and collect and analyze data that will lead to a deeper understanding of disease development and outcome. My prior work focused on three major areas: breast cancer, vaccine research and dementia. After several years of working in a role where I focused almost entirely on nephrology, I have returned to a position where I focus primarily on cancer-related collaborations. It is the study of these diseases that provide the impetus for my personal research efforts, which lie in three specific areas.
• Longitudinal Data: I am interested in understanding and developing methodologies that allow for making proper inferences from data when observations are correlated. It is useful when measurements are made repeatedly and/or on related individuals, and also in various biostatistical applications, such as in the analysis of data from stratified clinical trials.
• Statistical Genetics: I am interested in understanding the impact of disease mutations in populations. My primary interests lie in the areas of population-based genetic studies. In particular, I am interested in how data from outbred populations can be applied in such areas as molecular evolution, genetic mapping, sequence analysis, and the statistical/mathematical modeling of biological systems, and also the mapping of disease genes with familial data. I am also interested in better understanding methods for assessing the contribution of genetics to the onset and burden of disease in the current era of high throughput genotyping.
• Risk Models: There is tremendous interest currently in the use of risk prediction models as a part of risk assessment and counseling in the clinic. I have begun to develop my abilities in the use of clinical and other data for the purposes of development and evaluation of disease risk assessment models. I served as the co-principal investigator on a grant that was funded to study risk prediction models for breast cancer, and I have developed two risk prediction models, one for breast cancer risk assessment and one for assessing the likelihood that an elderly person would develop mild cognitive impairment.