Quantitative Methods in Biomarkers Resea

This course is a quantitative companion to Molecular Epidemiology (P8307) and will discuss quantitative methods and considerations needed to conduct epidemiology research involving biomarkers.  Using ‘real world’ examples, this course covers topics including data accession, storage, and sharing.  It includes a comprehensive evaluation of sources of biomarker data variability and how these features are handled analytically in the conduct of molecular epidemiology research.  The course covers topics including how to handle values less than the limits of detection, the identification of outliers and variability due to batch effects, freeze/thaw cycles along with sources of biologic variability including urinary dilution and lipid concentration.  It also discuss methods for implementing genome-wide and epigenome-wide association studies, sample and data pooling along with considerations for returning individual and aggregate-level molecular epidemiology results to study participants, scientific and lay audiences.  Class activities include quantitive demonstrations and discussions.  Assessment will be based on four assignments that include responses to quantitive and qualitative prompts using R-markdown.