Summer Institute in Statistical Genetics

General awareness of the power of genetic knowledge is evident in the rapid use of direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies for people to learn about their own ancestries and to find previously unknown relatives, and the consequent solving of long-cold crimes by genetic genealogists. More generally, the genetic constitutions of plants, animals and humans influence their fitness for survival and their behavior and also can reveal their evolutionary histories. Advances in genetics rest on observations made in nature or in the laboratory, and numerical representations of those observations inform scientific theories as well as the decisions made by conservationists, plant and animal breeders, forensic scientists and physicians. Turning data into knowledge is the realm of statistics, and statistical genetics is changing as fast as genetics itself to meet the challenges Mendel could not have imagined when he collected data on seven characteristics of peas. Human geneticists now have data sets with over a billion genetic elements per individual, and the statistical tools of even ten years ago are often not sufficient to reveal the underlying information in so much data. Students in the biological sciences need help in learning about new statistical procedures and the Summer Institute in Statistical Genetics lets them interact with the people who developed those procedures and who have proven themselves effective as instructors and mentors. The Summer Institute in Statistical Genetics is an annual program of 18 short courses, held in three parallel half-week sessions over a period of three weeks each July at the University of Washington. Each course is led by two instructors from across the US and other countries. Participants can progress through a series of courses, often over multiple years, that begin with basic concepts in probability and statistics and end with advanced topics including Markov chain Monte Carlo methods and pathway and network analyses. They can choose courses that address data from natural or experimental plant and animal populations, or human populations. They can follow population or quantitative genetic streams, or learn about applications to conservation or forensic science. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.