What do we do?
We develop novel statistical methodology and apply this to large human phenotype-genotype datasets (‘big data’) to address long-standing questions in population, quantitative, and medical genetics. Our approaches have improved accuracy for the prediction of disease risk in personalized medicine, quantified the contribution of genotype-environment interaction effects to obesity risk, and provided frameworks to examine the underlying genetic basis of phenotypic differences among groups of people as well as phenotypic similarities within families. Current work focuses on improved testing for sex-, age-, or environment-specific genetic effects, quantifying maternal genetic and social genetic effects, and investigating the role of genetic interactions between microbial and host genotype in shaping phenotype in the human population.
