Transcript Ohio State Talk, October 2004
Bioinformatics Training Program
Raymond J. Carroll Department of Statistics Faculty of Nutrition Texas A&M University
http://stat.tamu.edu/~carroll
Official Name
• Biostatistics, Bioinformatics and the Biological Basis of Nutrition and Cancer • Hence the clever acronym: http://www.stat.tamu.edu/b3nc
History
• Roughly in 1997, Steve Safe started the idea of a Center for Environmental and Rural Health • He needed a Biostatistics Research Core, and Jim Calvin nominated me.
History
• A major point of the CERH was to foster interdisciplinary contacts • Steve and Jim said: well you do nutrition, go talk to them • I met Nancy Turner at a reception to start off
History
• Nancy first started telling me about her data, namely the idea of colonic crypts • She drew these by hand: I wished I had saved the original pictures
History
• I then started talking with Nancy, Joanne Lupton and their student, Meeyoung Hong • Very cool: hierarchical functional data!
• With location effects!
History
• Naisyin Wang and I then gave the problem of these data to our student, Jeff Morris • Jeff started spending lots of time in the lab, and became very knowledgeable about the biology
History
• I was at U-Penn for 2 years, and just before coming back spent a week at the Canyon Ranch in Tucson • Very fancy food, nothing to do
History
• I wrote the first draft of the original Bioinformatics training program grant at Canyon ranch • I called a person at the NCI, and she suggested that I apply for a R25T, rather than a T32.
• The difference: faculty salary money!
History
• We also met Ed Dougherty of EE, who wrote an early paper on cDNA arrays • Robb Chapkin was a huge help in the proposal as well
Our Goal
• Our goal is to train statistically oriented individuals (Biostatisticians, Statisticians, Signal Processors, etc.) • To function as independent researchers in a multidisciplinary environment focusing on Nutrition and cancer.
The Challenge
• Even the Program Officer at the NCI thought we would not be able to recruit trainees • Because of the restriction to U.S. citizens and permanent residents
They Were Wrong!
• We recruited a Danh Nguyen from statistics (2001) • Aniruddha Datta from EE
Recruits in 2002
• Two statisticians: • Qi Zheng • Mahlet Tadesse
Our First Pre-doc (2002)
• Christie Spinka
• Ivan Ivanov
Recruits in 2003
• Kimberley Drews • Wenjiang Fu
Recruits in 2004
• Michael Swartz He has a twin brother Richard, but these are actually two of Michael (I think)
Resubmission in 2005
• We have added a rotation through the Genomics Facility Core • We have a systematic plan for rotations through labs, with a final choice late in fall of year 1
Resubmission in 2005
• We received the best score in our round!!
• We are now funded through July 2011 • I am looking forward (not!) to 2010 resubmission
Recruits in 2005
• Erchin Serepedin • Lan Zhou
• Ann Chen
Recruits in 2006
• Sujay Datta
Jerry Tsai
Other Mentors
Laurie Davidson Phil Mirkes Bani Mallick Marina Vannucci David Dahl Guoyao Wu Rosemary Walzem
Future Plans
Administrative Assistant
Joyce Sutherland runs the day-to-day operations for our Program, and for the proposed new Center for Statistical Bioinformatics
Thanks!
http://stat.tamu.edu/~carroll