Training in Advanced Statistical Methods in Neuroimaging and Genetics

About This Grant

This education project is a continuation of our current, national class, Training in Advanced Statistical Methods in Neuroimaging and Genetics. Over the past 15 year the National Institutes of Health has greatly increased funding of grants that utilized advanced neuroimaging methods, genetic methods, and advanced statistical methods. While introductory courses are offered, ours is the only advanced course offered in the United States that provides an intensive, hands-on (“doing”) learning opportunity to better prepare biomedical and clinical researchers in advanced statistical methods. In one decade the combined budgets that utilize these advanced analysis techniques from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Aging, National Institute on Drug Abuse, and National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering grew 5-fold, and there continues to be a great need to provide an educational opportunity to ensure the workforce is well positioned to carry out important work that has been identified by these and other institutes. Our program will continue to meet this need. We bring together a group of diverse world-class scientists and educators in a two-week intensive format to provide theoretical lectures paired with hands-on computer tutorials. Our course has served 103 students (55 total in 2021-2022 via Zoom due to COVID-19), and in 2023 (our 1st year of in-person) we taught 20 students, and 28 students in 2024 (in-person). We will enroll 26-30 students in April 2025 session. In our competitive renewal we will continue to enroll 26-30 students per year. With this being an advanced course, we ensure that the students accepted are a good education-level match for the content. We also implement mechanisms to maximize diverse perspective in our students and our teaching faculty. These students are accepted from across the United States, with attention to attracting a diverse student cohort. This education program will continue to distribute Tuition Awards based on financial need. We have evolved our course based on feedback from our current course alumni. In our class, over two weeks, students learn and put into practice methods such as: hierarchical statistical models, Bayesian statistics, network science, functional and structural connectomics, disease driven degeneration of the brain, and methods for analysis of genetics data such as polygenic risk scoring and structural equation modeling. The course concludes with lectures and labs on multi-modal analysis (imaging and imaging-genetics), and classification methods for biomarker development. Our course now includes 5 guest lecturers and team building activities outside of the classroom. To ensure students apply the acquired knowledge and skills to their independent research projects back at their home institutes, we supplement the course with our innovative continuing education: zoom-based sessions with the faculty for 8-months post formal course and students having near-real-time access regarding technical implementation questions through the Slack. This continued education portion greatly increases success utilizing their new practical skills in their own research.