Barbara Engelhardt, Associate Professor in Computer Science and the Center for Statistics and Machine Learning, has received an NSF CAREER Award for her research “Recovering complex associations from high-dimensional genomic data.” In this proposal, she develops new statistical models for finding associations between genotype and disease using ideas from machine learning and causal inference. “The genetic basis of disease is much more complicated than the models we have to find these associations, and machine learning ideas for finding complex causal associations in a computationally tractable way may be a big help in understanding disease,” says Engelhardt. Besides the impact on personalized medicine and health, Engelhardt will develop curricula for one-day programs in statistics for local elementary schools.
