Hosted by the Department of Biostatistics
Abstract: Polygenic risk score (PRS) has demonstrated its great utility in biomedical research by identifying high-risk individuals for different diseases based on their genotypes, facilitating disease monitoring and prevention. However, the broader application of PRS to the general population is hindered by the limited transferability of PRS developed in Europeans to non-European populations. Many statistical methods have been developed to improve PRS prediction accuracy in non-European populations through integrating results from European populations. In this presentation, I will discuss the statistical models underlying these methods, with a focus on those that use genome-wide association study summary statistics, instead of individual-level data, from different populations. The performance of these methods will be demonstrated through their applications to different traits in non-European and admixed populations.
Bio: Dr. Hongyu Zhao is the Ira V. Hiscock Professor of Biostatistics and Professor of Statistics and Data Science and Genetics. He received his B.S. in Probability and Statistics from Peking University in 1990 and Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1995. His research interests are the developments and applications of novel statistical methods to address scientific questions in genetics, molecular biology, drug developments, and precision medicine.
Some of his recent projects include large scale genome wide studies to identify genetic variants underlying complex diseases, genetic risk prediction, single cell analysis, biological network modeling and analysis, disease biomarker identification, genome annotation, cancer genomics, microbiome analysis, image analysis, and wearable device data analysis. He has published over 700 articles in statistics, human genetics, bioinformatics, genomics, and proteomics, and edited three books on human genetics analysis and statistical genomics. He has trained over 110 doctoral and post-doctoral students, many of whom are holding tenured or tenure-track positions at major universities in the states and overseas.
Dr. Zhao has served as an editor and/or associate editor of leading statistical and genetics journals, including as a co-deitor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association Theory and Methods and a co-editor of Statistics in Biosciences. He was the recipient of the Mortimer Spiegelman Award for a top statistician in health statistics under the age of 40 awarded by the American Public Health Association and the Pao-Lu Hsu Award from the International Chinese Statistical Association. His research has also been recognized by the Evelyn Fix Memorial Medal and Citation by UC Berkeley, a Basil O'Connor Starter Scholar Award by the March of Dimes Foundation, election to the fellowship of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Statistical Association, the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering.