Summer Institute in Statistical Genetics

人们对基因知识的力量有了普遍的认识，这一点很明显：直接面向消费者的基因检测公司的迅速使用，让人们了解自己的祖先，找到以前不认识的亲戚，以及基因系谱学家由此解决了长期悬而未决的犯罪。更一般地说，植物、动物和人类的遗传结构影响着它们的生存适应性和行为，也可以揭示它们的进化史。遗传学的进步依赖于对自然界或实验室的观察，而这些观察的数值表示为科学理论提供了依据，也为自然资源保护主义者、植物和动物饲养者、法医科学家和医生的决策提供了依据。将数据转化为知识是统计学的领域，统计遗传学的变化速度与遗传学本身一样快，以应对孟德尔在收集豌豆的七个特征数据时无法想象的挑战。人类遗传学家现在拥有的数据集包含每个人超过10亿个基因元素，即使是十年前的统计工具也常常不足以揭示如此多数据中的潜在信息。生物科学专业的学生在学习新的统计程序方面需要帮助，而统计遗传学暑期学院让他们与开发这些程序的人互动，这些人已经证明自己是有效的讲师和导师。统计遗传学暑期学院是一个由18个短期课程组成的年度项目，每年7月在华盛顿大学举行，分三个平行的半周课程，为期三周。每门课程都由来自美国和其他国家的两名教师领导。参与者可以通过一系列课程取得进展，这些课程通常需要几年的时间，从概率和统计的基本概念开始，到高级主题，包括马尔可夫链蒙特卡罗方法和路径和网络分析。他们可以选择处理自然或实验植物和动物种群或人类种群数据的课程。他们可以跟踪种群或定量遗传流，或者学习保护或法医学的应用。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.