Research

Our research is at the junction of statistical and biological sciences. Our research interests lie in two interrelated directions:

Developing statistical methods for understanding biological questions, especially those related to large-scale genomic data;
Identifying, formulating, and resolving important, yet not previously addressed statistical questions arising from the frontiers of biology.

The specific topics we have examined include:

Statistics:

  • Control of false discovery rates in multiple testing and asymmetric errors in binary classification
  • Measures of association
  • High-dimensional linear model inference and variable selection
  • Bipartite network stochastic block model inference

Bioinformatics / Statistical Genomics:

  • Statistical rigor in omics data analysis
  • Statistical method development for single-cell omics data
  • Statistical method development for bulk short-read RNA-seq data
  • Using statistics to quantify the Central Dogma, the fundamental principle of molecular biology
  • Comparative genomics: developing novel statistical methods to investigate conserved or divergent biological phenomena in different tissue and cell types across multiple species
  • Identification of gene-gene and protein-DNA interactions using diverse genomic data