Statistics Seminar - Spring 2024

Seminars are held on Thursdays from 4:00 - 5:00pm on Webex unless otherwise noted. For access information, please contact the Math Department.

For questions about the seminar schedule, please contact Chong Jin.

February 22

Dr. Saonli Basu, University of Minnesota

Efficient SNP-based Heritability Estimation in Multi-ethnic Large-scale Cohort Studies

With the advent of high throughput genetic data, there have been attempts to estimate heritability from genome-wide SNP data on a cohort of distantly related individuals. Linear mixed models (LMMs) are used to estimate this heritability parameter. Heritability is the ratio of the genetic variance over the total variance of the trait. Fitting such an LMM in large-scale cohort studies and estimating these variance parameters, however, is tremendously challenging due to high dimensional linear algebraic operations. Moreover, there are population substructures in the dataset that could impact heritability estimation. In this talk, I will discuss the challenges in estimating heritability in a large biobank scale cohort. I will propose both parametric and non-parametric alternatives to heritability estimation. We illustrate our approach with extensive simulation studies to estimate the heritability of multiple quantitative traits from the UK Biobank cohort.

February 29 (In-Person w/ Virtual Option)

Dr. Ian W. McKeague, Columbia University

Concurrent functional linear regression with application to wearable device data

This talk discusses a nonparametric inference framework for occupation time curves derived from wearable device data. Such curves provide the total time a subject maintains activity above a given level as a function of that level. Taking advantage of the monotonicity and smoothness properties of these curves, we develop a likelihood ratio approach to construct confidence bands for mean occupation time curves. An extension to fitting concurrent functional regression models is also developed. Application to wearable device data from an ongoing study of an experimental gene therapy for mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome will be discussed.

*Based on joint work with Hsin-Wen Chang (Academia Sinica).


Last Updated: February 22, 2024