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The University of Oxford
offers a four year doctoral training programme in genomic
medicine and statistics, training students to research in the
methodologies required to understand the molecular basis of
complex disease. The programme consists of a one year
modular course (including formal teaching and two short research
projects) followed by a three year doctoral research project,
which can take place in any of the participating departments at
the University. The course takes advantage of Oxford’s
strengths in genetics, genomic medicine and statistics;
disciplines that will set the medical research agenda of the
21st Century.
The Wellcome Trust
Centre for Human Genetics (WTCHG), which will host the
programme, has world-leading groups in statistics,
bioinformatics, genomic analysis, protein structure and
functional biology. United by a common interest in understanding
the molecular basis of disease, researchers are affiliated to
diverse departments, with interests ranging from susceptibility
to infection, neurodegenerative disorders, cardiovascular
disease, language development, mental illness, statistical
genetics and statistical bioinformatics, and come from both
clinical and pure science backgrounds. This combination of skills
and interests, the ability to cross disciplines and to address
old problems in new ways, has proved crucial to the scientific
success of the WTCHG and provides a unique training
opportunity. Students educated within the culture of the
WTCHG
are encouraged to develop cross-disciplinary interests, and to
develop into scientists able to take new and unexpected
approaches to old problems using the latest and emerging
technologies. The WTCHG is already home to a number of such
students and the doctoral programme builds on these, and other,
interdepartmental links.
The doctoral programme
is integrated with projects already in place at the WTCHG,
identifying the susceptibility genes underlying common disease. Genetic and genomic studies pave the way to answering
fundamental questions in epidemiology and disease aetiology: how
and why populations differ in their spectrum of
disease-variants; how these variants interact with environmental
causes; how information about DNA sequence variants, gene
expression and protein content relates to disease phenotype; how
we can use this flood of new molecular information to arrive at
improved definitions of disease that lend themselves to better
diagnosis and treatment. Over the next few years it is likely
that whole genome systems biology (including DNA copy number
detection, gene expression, metabolite profiling and,
eventually, whole genome resequencing of very large cohorts)
will become routine. Consequently methods and research
opportunities for dissecting complex disease will undergo a
further revolution. This revolution is likely to be driven by
scientists with strong quantitative skills aligned with a deep
understanding of the underlying biology.
Members of the
Mathematical Genetics Group at the Department of Statistics at
the University of Oxford, at the forefront of developing and applying
statistical tools for genomic analysis, are members of the
WTCHG, including Professor Peter
Donnelly FRS, who has been Centre Director since 2007. Members
of the WTCHG have collaborated on several internationally
important groundbreaking projects, including
HapMap, the
Wellcome
Trust Case Control Consortium,
1,000
Genomes and the European Union
MolPAGE
programme. |
