Biostatistics for Research in Environmental Health

描述（由申请人提供）：这个为期五年的多学科项目旨在培养三个不同但相互关联的领域的博士生（博士）和博士后学生：环境生物统计学，环境流行病学和环境健康科学。目标是让科学家准备好应对环境健康科学研究中出现的新挑战。通过建立一个涉及这三个关键科学领域之间合作的培训计划，我们有一个独特的机会来推进环境领域

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This multidisciplinary five-year program is designed to train predoctoral (PhD) and postdoctoral students in three distinct but interrelated areas: Environmental Biostatistics, Environmental Epidemiology, and Environmental Health Science. The goal is to prepare scientists to address emerging challenges in environmental health science research. By constructing a training program that involves collaboration among these three critical scientific areas, we have a unique opportunity to advance the field of environmental health in ways that could not be achieved if the training were achieved via three single disciplinary programs. Current environmental health research, whether involving experiments with laboratory animals or observational studies of human populations, is becoming increasingly complex. The valid quantification of exposures to environmental hazards requires consideration of complicated time- dependent multiple exposure profiles. Assessment of early biologic effects (biomarkers) requires elucidation of how exposure profiles relate to multiple, intermediate, and often correlated endpoints. A critical component is a better understanding of heterogeneity across individuals in environmental effects through the creative use of state-of-the-art systems biology technologies for global measures of gene expression, levels of metabolites, epigenetic alterations and single nucleotide polymorphisms across the genome. Assessment of exposure-disease relationships thus requires knowledge of the connections between exposure, early biological effects, genetic factors and their potential interaction with the environment, uniting al this knowledge to understand how these factors may affect multiple, possibly correlated health outcomes. Training programs that produce well-rounded scientists who can address these complex research questions are clearly needed to advance environmental health science. Funding is requested for the support of 23 predoctoral trainees (9 BIOS, 7 EPID, and 7 ENVR) and for 5 postdoctoral trainees (1 BIOS, 2 EPID, and 2 ENVR). The Departments of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Environmental Sciences and Engineering, the three largest and most recognized departments in the 2nd-ranked UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, have available all the personnel and facilities sufficient to provide comprehensive predoctoral and postdoctoral training.