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Statististics &

Statistical Collaboration

Brian Yandell

22 January 2023

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roles & perspectives

Statistician

study design & inference using

theory & methods

Data Scientist

find patterns in data via

pipelines & visualizations

Software Engineer

create and document reusable code aligned with

FAIR & CARE principles

Collaborator

share ideas via

listening & writing

Scientist

be relevant in

studying the world

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collaboration balancing act

  • why vs what vs how
    • dig to get ideas of why behind key questions
    • tie analysis and data exploration to key questions
    • encourage connection of results back to key questions
  • limited resources
    • statistician's time, energy and expertise
    • collaborator's attention for conceptual vs technical inquiry
    • goals of, training of, and relevance of approach to students
  • find the sweet spot
    • do enough to understand how to convey issues (80/20 rule)
    • find path and insights towards useful results
    • share ideas & tools in ways that elevate collaborators

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Career Influences

  • 1970s Caltech to UC Berkeley
    • Caltech BS, summers at UC Berkeley: math, biology, computers
    • Watson Fellow: year travel to Europe & India
    • UC Berkeley MS & PhD statistics & biostatistics
  • 1980s-2000s UW-Madison faculty (stat/hort/biometry)
    • Campus-wide perspective on research
    • Biometry: co-advised research consulting & collaboration
    • Focus on building data science capacity among biologists
  • 1990s-2000s Research focus towards systems genetics
    • early QTL gene mapping and model selection for architecture
    • making sense of high throughput phenotyping data
  • 2010s Leadership opportunities
    • Statistics Department Chair
    • creating revenue programs and growing data science
    • creating Data Science Hub and Institute
  • 2020s Retirement
    • returning to research roots
    • becoming available for new collaborations

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Research Teams

  • 1980s-2010s Biometry collaborations with multiple teams
  • 1990s genetic basis of flowering time
    • Tom Osborn in Agronomy (now head of veg analytics at Bayer)
  • 2000s-2010s genetics of diabetes and obesity
    • Alan Attie & Mark Keller in Biochemistry
    • Gary Churchill at Jackson Labs
  • 1990s-2010s systems genetics and QTLs at scale
    • Zhao-Bang Zeng at NCSU
    • Nenjing Yi at U Alabama Birmingham
    • Gary Churchill at Jackson Labs
    • Karl Broman & Christina Kendziorski in BMI at UW-Madison
    • Rob Williams & GeneNetwork at U TN & ORNL
  • 2020s
    • Founding Director of Data Science Institute
    • COVID-19 Research Group: team of teams
    • back to Statistics
    • reconnecting with Systems Genetics collaborators