BFB11

Biostatistical Foundations in Bioinformatics

   IMPORTANT DATES for BFB11
   Deadline for applications: October 17th 2011
         EARLY: October 1st 2011
        NORMAL: October 10th 2011
   Course date: October 24th - October 28th 2011

Instructors:

Antónia Turkman is a full professor at the Department of Statistics and Operations Research at the Faculty of Science, University of Lisbon, since 1993. She is at present Coordinator of the Center of Statistics and Applications of the same University. Her main interests are Bayesian statistics, computational statistics, foundations of statistics, and applications of statistics in medicine, epidemiology and genetics. She is co-author of a book on Bayesian Statistics and another on Generalized Linear Models. Currently she teaches the course Biostatistics for Bioinformatics in the University of Lisbon, among other statistical courses for BSc. and MSc. She is also responsible for the coordination of the Biostatistics modulo for the M.Sc. course of Neurosciences of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Lisbon.
FCUL Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, PT

Carina Silva Fortes graduated in Statistics and Operational Research and holds a MSc degree in Probability and Statistics from Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa. She is Adjunct Professor at Escola Superior de Tecnologia da Saúde de Lisboa (ESTeSL - IPL) and teaches Applied Mathematics and Biostatistics there. She coordinated the course "Statistical Data Analysis with R" at ESTeSL. She is a member and collaborator of CEAUL (Center of Statistics and Applications). She cooperated on the design of the Biostatistics module of the European Masters Programme in Radiation Sciences for Oncology named EMPIRION. Her main research interests are Statistics in Health Sciences, ROC analysis, Molecular Genetics (Microarray Data Analysis) and Bayesian Statistics. She was one of the instructors of the BFB10 course in 2010.
ESTeSL Escola Superior de Tecnologias da Saúde de Lisboa, Lisboa, PT

Course description:

This is one of our "Foundations" type courses, providing a systematic and detailed review of fundamental concepts and techniques used in Bioinformatics. Many analytical and inferential methods, regardless of their novelty, have their niches of application all over the place in Bioinformatics. Newer techniques such as the ones employed in high throughput data analysis are not different in this respect. We will be looking at statistical methods, digging into their inner workings, wearing the skins of professional statisticians. Attendees can expect to attend a thorough set of lectures that will reveal the conceptual frameworks that are needed to understand the methods, and extensive hands-on practice, exclusively based on biological examples.

Target Audience

Everybody using Bioinformatics methods is implicitly using statistical methods. Most people have had one or more semester courses in Statistics in their graduate education. For many, Statistics happened in their lives a long a time ago, and that makes it difficult to go back and manipulate the concepts with full confidence. Moreover, proper judgment of the results often calls for a deeper level of understanding than what is required to solve scholarly exercises.

Attending this course is a chance of revisiting subjects like experimental design, hypothesis testing, inference and prediction in an intensive and systematic way. We will look into particular areas such as Bayesian Inference, Hidden Markov Chains and Multivariate methods with the attitude, eyes and brains of a statistician that wants to understand how the methods work.

Methodology

The course will introduce a relatively high number of concepts and methods. To keep it highly practical, we will spend most of the time in hands-on sessions.
- We will focus on each method using examples taken from real world Bioinformatics practice.
- We will then dissect the method, identifying the concepts and exploring their interrelationships.
- The applicability and limitations of each method will be emphasized.
- The use of the method will be illustrated using appropriate Bioinformatics tools and biological data resources.

Course Pre-requisites

Basic knowledge in Statistics is handy.
Before the course, attendees should briefly review the following concepts, if needed: probability, conditional probability, distribution, statistical tests, hypothesis testing, and inference.
Elementary skills in computer usage are needed.
Basic Familiarity with the R environment will be necessary.

Detailed Program

Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência,

Apartado 14, 2781-901 Oeiras, Portugal

GTPB Homepage

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Last updated: September 17th 2011