Biostatistics Summer Initiative

2008 Project List

Mentors for the projects will be:

Kathryn Chaloner, Jacob Oleson, Brian Smith, Gideon Zamba

Project: Ultrasound studies of early indicators of atherosclerosis – Thickened arteries in the chest and neck are known to be associated with heart disease in the elderly.  We are currently using ultrasound technology and automated software to view and measure the thickness of artery walls in teenage, young adult, and middle-aged subjects.  More work is needed in assessing the reliability and validity of such measures.

Project: Time-series modeling of driving studies – In driving simulators and in instrumented vehicles, we have been obtaining digitized information on the driving performance of healthy and impaired subjects. We are currently developing sophisticated mathematical models for the analysis of such data.

Project: Lung Airways tree assessment study — It is important to study the quality of the airways tree in normal human subjects, and set the study results as gold standard in order to identify smoking related diseases and cancerous cells that can damage human lung composition. To asses the quality of the lung, one uses the lung tree luminal areas and the relative wall thickness. However, there is a biological gender difference in lung composition as well as lung volume. This ongoing project will build a model for normal subjects’ lung composition and identify differences/similarities between males and females lung composition at various locations of the tree for the same lung volume.

Project: Cochlear Implant study — Cochlear implants have been designed to support speech recognition by persons with profound hearing loss.  We will statistically analyze data from cochlear implant patients to determine the effectiveness of implants in speech development of children and effectiveness in music perception and appraisal.

Project: Particulate Matter and Aerosol Optical Death study — Epidemiological studies have demonstrated a relationship between particulate matter (PM) and health effects, particularly cardiovascular and respiratory mortality.  We will demonstrate how the day-to-day variability in air pollution (PM) is related to aerosol optical depth (AOD) which can both be used to examine the mortality - air pollution association.

Project: Statistical Computing for Spatial Data Analysis – Spatial analysis allows for the mapping of environmental health effects, like particulate matter and residential radon that exhibit correlation over geographic regions.  The large datasets involved in such analyses offer many interesting statistical and computational challenges.  We are currently developing software for the analysis of spatial data.  This ongoing project offers opportunities to learn about the graphical display and analysis of such data using the R statistical software program.

Project:  The interaction of HIV and GB virus type C – Clinical and laboratory studies have indicated that the HIV virus interacts with a virus called GB virus type C.  GB virus type C is transmitted in the same way as HIV, but is not associated with any known disease.  Several epidemiological studies have shown that subjects HIV infection and also with GB virus type C infection live longer than subjects with HIV but without GB virus type C infection.  Laboratory studies have indicated that there is an interaction between HIV and GH virus type C.  This project will examine data on immunologic markers of subjects with HIV infection, some of whom are also infected with GB virus type C.  The data analysis will use graphical exploration of multivariate data in the programs R and Ggobi.

Project: Genome-wide gene-mapping study of human disorders
The rapid development of genotyping technology makes it possible to search for genetic risk factors underlying human disorders over the whole genome by making use of high density single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The latest Affymetrix genome-wide human SNP array 6.0 can provide genotypes on up to 1 million SNPs. We have several genome-wide association studies and genome-wide linkage analyses going on that involve various kinds of human disorders.  The data analysis will use genetics programs easyLinkage and PLINK.

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