News & Events Spring 2009

 

Recipients of 21st Century Leadership Awards
Pictured left to right are Lauren Scheiper, Communication Disorders and Abby Harper, Public Health Sciences

Lauren Scheiper, a Communication Disorders major and Abby Harper, a Public Health Sciences major received The 21st Century Leaders Awards at the University Commencement on Saturday, May 23, 2009. The 21st Century Leaders Award recognizes graduating seniors who are academically accomplished and who have contributed to the university by exceptional achievement or have enhanced the reputation of the campus. The recipients are nominated by faculty for strong leadership qualities; noteworthy original research; community service; the achievement of success by overcoming extraordinary personal circumstances, or public presentation through art, performance or athletic ability. The awards are presented during the Undergraduate Commencement celebrations each May.
May 30, 2009
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Patty Freedson to Receive a Citation Award
Patty Freedson will be receiving a Citation Award from the American College of
Sports Medicine at their annual being held in Seattle, Washington May 27th-30th,
2009. The Citation Award of the American College of Sports Medicine is granted to
an individual or group who has made significant and important contributions to sports medicine and/or the exercise sciences. These contributions may include, but are not limited to, research and scholarship; clinical care; and/or administrative or educational services in sports medicine or exercise science. ACSM membership is not a requirement for this award.
May 27, 2009
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Jane Kent-Braun to Give President's Lecture
Jane Kent-Braun, Professor in Kinesiology, will give a President's lecture at the upcoming annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine meeting in Seattle, Washington May 27th-30th, 2010. The title of her talk is "Skeletal Muscle Physiology in Vivo: Aging Comes of Age."
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Sturgeon Given Grant to Develop Blood Test  for Breast Cancer
Susan R. Sturgeon, associate professor in the Department of Public Health, has been awarded a two-year, $232,588 by the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation to develop a diagnostic blood test for breast cancer.

Sturgeon is working with Kathleen Arcaro, associate professor of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, and Andrea Foulkes, associate professor of Public Health, on the study.

The concept is based on the premise that breast cancer tumors have certain DNA changes known as promoter hypermethylation, and that breast cancer tumors shed sufficient quantities of DNA into the blood to allow detection of the presence of such epigenetic changes. Epigenetic literally means “on the gene,” and promoter hypermethylation is when a methyl molecule is added to the DNA backbone of a gene causing a loss of normal function.

A series of small clinical studies have shown the feasibility of this approach, with moderately high accuracy of breast cancer detection achieved using a relatively small number of genes (usually three to four) in blood. It is likely that expansion of the panel to include other breast-cancer related genes would markedly increase the accuracy of the test. Thus, DNA in serum will be evaluated for promoter hypermethylation in 12 candidate genes from approximately 250 node-positive postmenopausal breast cancer cases, 75 node-negative postmenopausal breast cancer cases, and a comparison group of 250 postmenopausal benign breast disease control subjects who were part of the Mayo Serum Bank, a resource established in the 1970s to identify early markers of breast cancer. The objective will be to determine whether this panel of genes can be used to accurately detect breast cancer.

While early detection by screening mammography has led to a decline in breast cancer mortality over the past decade, mammography has several well-known limitations, including a high rate of false positives, reduced sensitivity in dense breasts, and concerns over radiation exposure, particularly in high-risk women who may benefit by more than annual screening. Limitations of mammography screening combined with a rapid revolution in available molecular tools have led to renewed and vigorous research interest in developing a complementary molecular biomarker for early detection of breast cancer.

Changes in DNA methylation patterns are a common feature of malignant cells, and promoter hypermethylation in key genes is considered one of the most promising biomarkers for a reliable and sensitive screen for early breast cancer.

“Detection of methylation status in serum could lead to the development of an inexpensive, minimally invasive blood test to complement mammography screening<” said Sturgeon. “A methylation-based blood test would be valuable as it could be used between annual mammograms in high-risk women or to evaluate suspicious mammogram findings.”

The test could also assist in identifying women at high-risk of developing breast cancer who may benefit from additional screening methods or other prevention strategies, and could be a valuable intermediate endpoint in chemoprevention trials, she said.
May 21, 2009.
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SPHHS, Education Faculty Share $799k Grant
Faculty in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences and the School of Education have been awarded a four-year, $796,809 Personnel Preparation Grant from the U.S. Department of Education to support speech-language pathology doctoral students focusing on special education.

The participating faculty are Mary Andrianopoulos, Elena Zaretsky, Shelley Velleman and Patricia Mercaitis in the Speech-Language Pathology (SLP) program in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences, and Mary Lynn Boscardin of the Special Education concentration in the School of Education.

According to Andrianopoulos, the grant will help address a critical shortage of speech-language pathology Ph.D.s nationally and support the development of the next generation of research scientists and faculty. The grant will support between five and seven Speech-Language Pathology doctoral students planning to major in topics related to SLP with a minor in Special Education between 2009-13, she said. The doctoral students will conduct empirically-based research to assess the effectiveness of various remedial approaches to manage and educate individuals with communicative disabilities, including autism spectrum disorders.

It is the second such grant given to the group by the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) in two years. Last year, they received a four-year, $799,602 award. According to Andrianopoulos, the faculty members have been awarded more than $2.3 million by the federal agency over the past five years. “These faculty were funded thanks to their significant contributions to the professions and empirical research,” she said.

Two previously awarded autism personnel preparation grants from DOE are supporting 48 master’s students in Speech-Language Pathology between 2005 and 2013.

“Both grants allow the SLP concentration in Communication Disorders to attract and recruit higher-caliber students to the department, and also to enhance its national reputation,” Andrianopoulos said. “In 2008, U.S. News and World Report ranked the Speech-Language Pathology program in the Department of Communication Disorders in the top 30 graduate programs in the country. Moreover, the Special Education concentration at UMass Amherst was ranked in the top 50 programs nationally.”

The autism training grants also provide strong support for the Communication Disorders Department’s service mission, she said, by increasing and improving clinical services for people with autism in the Center for Language, Speech and Hearing. The center is an on-campus graduate teaching clinic that provides assessment and treatment services for residents of the Pioneer Valley and New England. SLP faculty and grant-related supervisors also send their practicum students to carry out graduate internships in local area schools, early intervention programs and other acute care and rehabilitation agencies. “They also contribute to community awareness and support for families with children with autism spectrum disorders,” said Andrianopoulos.

In addition, she said, the autism training grants enhance and support the research focus within the Department of Communication Disorders with respect to neurodevelopmental communication and motor speech disorders as well as literacy development in children with autism spectrum disorders. Graduate students supported by the grant carry out cutting-edge research projects and as members of the autism community, including school systems, learn about their work and volunteer to assist in the research endeavors of the five faculty members.

The team of faculty also networks and collaborates with other autism specialists in the Pioneer Valley and across the state, as well as in other countries, including Greece, Morocco, India and South Africa, said Andrianopoulos.

Photo: Participating faculty are (clockwise from top left) are Patricia Mercaitis, Mary Lynn Boscardin, Elena Zaretsky, Mary Andrianopoulos and Shelley Velleman.
May 20, 2009.
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Chipkin Appears on Cable TV Program
Stuart Chipkin, M.D., research professor in Kinesiology, is a principal guest this month on a one-hour cable television program, “The State of our Health, The Health of our State: Obesity in Massachusetts.”

Part of a regular feature sponsored by the Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS) called Physician Focus, it airs on public access cable channels and online at www.hcam.tv/obesity. Chipkin suggests ways to add more physical activity into one’s daily routine such as taking the stairs, shoveling snow instead of using a machine and raking leaves. If one can also remove 250 calories a day from the diet at the same time, the combined relatively modest changes can make a difference over the long term.

Chipkin, who is also an endocrinologist with Valley Medical Group in Amherst and a medical consultant for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Diabetes Control and Prevention Program, appears on screen with Denise Rollinson, chair of the medical society’s Committee on Nutrition and Physical Activity. This is Chipkin’s second appearance on Physician Focus; in 2007 he was a guest on another show about the health impact of obesity, when he was chair of the society’s Committee on Nutrition.

The cable TV program is a collaborative production of the medical society with the Department of Public Health and Hopkinton Community Television. In addition to Chipkin, other speakers note that obesity and overweight have been linked to dozens of chronic illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease and are fast becoming the nation’s leading causes of preventable disease and death. According to the medical society, more than one in five Massachusetts residents – about one million people – are obese and almost one in three of Massachusetts high-school and middle-school students are either obese or overweight.

Founded in 1781, MMS is the oldest continuously operating medical society in the country and has more than 21,000 physicians and student members. It publishes the New England Journal of Medicine plus newsletters in 13 specialties.
May 19, 2009.
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Umberger Visits Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam
Brian Umberger, assistant professor of Kinesiology, gave an invited lecture on the biomechanics and energetics of human locomotion on May 11 at the Vrije Universiteit (Free University) in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

During the visit, Umberger also participated in the dissertation defense ceremony of a Ph.D. candidate and met with several faculty members at the university to discuss common research interests, and to compare doctoral training in the U.S. and the Netherlands.
May 18, 2009.
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Kinesiology PhD student receives research grant
Sarah Kozey, a Ph.D. student in Kinesiology, has been awarded a $5,000 doctoral student research grant from the American College of Sports Medicine Foundation.

The grant will support her project, “Validation of Objective Measures for Sedentary and Light Intensity Activity,” which will examine wearable motion sensors as potential tools to assess sedentary behavior in adults.
May 11, 2009.
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UMass Amherst Researcher Edward Calabrese Receives Marie Curie Prize
AMHERST, Mass. – Edward Calabrese, a professor in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has been awarded the Marie Curie Prize for “outstanding achievements in research on the effects of low and very low doses of ionizing radiation on human health and biotopes.”

At an international conference this week at UMass Amherst, Andre Maisseu, president of the Paris-based World Council of Nuclear Workers, announced that Calabrese is the council’s 2009 Curie Prize winner. Maisseu saluted Calabrese during the annual meeting of the International Dose-Response Society, of which Calabrese, an environmental toxicologist, is a founder and current director. Maisseu said the prize recognizes an entire body of research that has improved scientific knowledge of low-dose ionizing radiation effects on human beings and biological communities. A formal award ceremony will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in September.

While Calabrese is the foremost expert in the world on a chemical dose-response phenomenon known as hormesis, he has done little dose-response work with ionizing radiation, he observes. However, he feels deeply honored by the council’s recognition. “I accept that I’m being given credit for bridging the gap between chemical hormesis and ionizing radiation,” he says, “and I do believe there is evidence to bridge it. What I have urged all along is for mainstream science to see hormesis as a basic biological principle.”

Hormesis describes the fact that low doses of some chemicals are stimulative or promote growth but higher doses are toxic or inhibit growth, for example. The Marie Curie Prize winner, who joined the UMass Amherst faculty in 1976, says, “We need to conduct the research?which has been long neglected?to understand hormesis more fully, with all its implications.”

The theory’s proponents suggest that low doses of minerals in multivitamin pills such as chromium and selenium, for example, boost health not because they provide required nutrients but because low doses of many toxins stimulate biological systems with beneficial mild stress, while higher doses are toxic. By contrast, the prevailing linear threshold model of toxin behavior says the absence of harmful effects below the threshold assumes there are no effects relevant to health.

Calabrese and colleagues’ work on chemical hormesis sparked vigorous scientific debate and a special section in the journal, Science, in 1989. Challenged to subject hormesis experiments to more rigorous statistical standards, Calabrese and his longtime UMass Amherst collaborator, Linda Baldwin, created a database of 21,000 papers. In 2003, they reported in a ground-breaking paper that the low-dose stimulatory effect of chemicals is typically about 40 percent enhanced growth, for example.

“It was a coming-out party for hormesis,” Calabrese recalls. “We made a credible case and we did it by following the scientific rules of the game,” he says of their work over the past 30 years. By contrast, he says, the two leading risk assessment models used by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration have been imposed on society and the scientific community without being vetted or validated.

Everyday implications of hormesis for risk assessment are significant. If chemical hormesis is a basic biological principle, Calabrese says, society is needlessly over-regulating the environment to protect against low exposures that are not dangerous, and we’re missing possible benefits. “The traditional threshold model is not very good at explaining or accounting for data that’s below the toxic threshold, and that’s where we live. But hormesis is quite good at that.”

Major Implications for Public Health Policy

Mark Mattson, chief of the Laboratory of Neurosciences at the National Institute on Aging, one of Calabrese’s past co-authors, agrees that the findings for which Calabrese is being recognized with the Marie Curie Prize “have major implications for public health policy regarding environmental ‘toxins,’ for the design of biomedical studies, and for the discovery of new therapeutic interventions for a range of diseases.”

Mattson adds that the UMass Amherst research clearly reveals that “hormesis as a widespread feature of biological systems (cells, tissues, organisms and populations) that was previously either unrecognized or ignored by scientists in the fields of biology, biomedical research and toxicology. Calabrese and colleagues have shown that biological systems very often respond adaptively to low amounts of toxins and other stresses (radiation, heat, etc.) so as to increase their resistance to more severe stress and disease.”

Maisseu says it’s unfortunate that most research on ionizing radiation conducted since nuclear weapons were developed has focused on its harmfulness. This has prevented valuable work on possible beneficial low-dose effects, including adaption and repair mechanisms, he feels. Further, anti-hormesis prejudice has deprived the scientific community of fundamental knowledge which might be uncovered, and which is needed to pursue the fight against the different forms of cancer, Maisseu adds.

He therefore salutes Calabrese’s “courageous opposition to this indefensible position with regard to scientific research.” Recalling the famous statement by the 15th century toxicologist, Paracelsus, that all substances are poison and only dose makes a poison, Maisseu adds, “Calabrese dared to undertake work making it possible to correctly appreciate the relationship between dose and effect in many areas of toxicology and biology, and to highlight numerous examples of the hormesis phenomenon.”
May 1, 2010
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2009 Undergraduate Recipients of the UMass Amherst Alumni Association Scholarships & Awards

May 2009
______________________________________________________________________________Dean Aelion Receives ESE Distinguished Alumnus Award
The Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering is pleased to announce C. Marjorie Aelion (PhD '88, Pfaender Advisor) as the recipient of an ESE Distinguished Alumnus Award for 2009.   Aelion is Dean of the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  She previously worked for the U.S. Geological Survey, Water Resources Division as a hydrologist for three years before beginning her academic career at the University of South Carolina (USC) in Columbia in 1991.  She was an Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences, and the Associate Dean for Research for the Arnold School of Public Health while at USC. 

Dean Aelion obtained her SMCE in Civil Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts and her PhD from UNC's Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering.  She was a Fulbright awardee to the Université de Bretagne Occidentale in France, and the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands.  She received the National Science Foundation Presidential Faculty Fellow Award in 1993, one of 30 awarded in all science and engineering disciplines.  Dean Aelion serves on the Editorial Board of Bioremediation Journal, Oceans and Oceanography, and is Managing Editor for Biodegradation.  She is the author of over 70 peer-reviewed scientific articles and one edited book.

Her research is in the area of biodegradation of organic contaminants, tools for assessing remedial technologies, including stable isotopes and naturally-occurring radiocarbon, and the application and development of enhanced remediation systems for contaminated ground water.  She has additional interests in the impact of land use on coastal contaminant removal and nutrient cycling, and the associations of metals in residential soils with negative health outcomes in children.

Her nomination for the ESE Distinguished Alumni Award was led by ESE Professor Fred Pfaender who praised her in his letter, "Dr. Aelion has been a respected scientist working in the area of bioremediation for most of her career after leaving Carolina.  She has recently been named Dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Mass.  This is significant recognition of her achievements as a scientist, professor and academic administrator.  We are extremely proud of her accomplishments and contributions to the field of Environmental Sciences."  

Dean Aelion was the featured guest of the Department on Friday, April 17, 2009.  During her visit, Dean Aelion presented a seminar entitled "What Happens When You Get an Epidemiologist, an Environmental Health Scientist and a Biostatistician in a Room?  A Study of the Associations of Soil Metals with Mental Retardation and Developmental Delay in Children" and was the guest speaker at Learning & Libations (L & L) held at the Carolina Brewery.
April 17, 2009
______________________________________________________________________________ Poissant Receives 2009 SPHHS College Outstanding Teacher Award
Dr. Sarah Poissant, associate professor of Communication Disorders, has been named the SPHHS College Outstanding Teacher for 2008-2009. Dr. Poissant teaches both undergraduate and graduate students and is absolutely convinced that fostering a classroom of fully-engaged students is the best way to maximize learning. She views her role as a teacher as evolutionary where her approach and techniques will change over time, based upon updated knowledge of best practices - and perhaps a bit of experimentation. While Dr. Poissant could conduct her research and serve her profession in any number of jobs, she chooses an academic position because of her students; she is most honored by this award.

Many students wrote letters of support for Dr. Poissant when she was nominated for the SPHHS College Outstanding Teacher Award for 2008-2009. Each student commented that Dr. Poissant takes pride in her job as an educator, making classes more lively and interesting. She has a strong desire to help her students learn and is passionate about the material she teaches, which directly enhances the students' level of interest in the classroom.
March 2009
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Arctic Communities Partner with UMass Amherst Researcher to Learn How Indigenous Young People Avoid Alcohol Abuse, Suicide
AMHERST, Mass. – Researchers in four countries, including health educator Lisa Wexler of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, have begun a three-year study of how indigenous young men and women in Arctic communities avoid pitfalls such as alcohol abuse and suicide to become healthy adults.

A key to the $1.09 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s International Polar Year initiative is that it brings tribal leaders from five communities in Norway, Canada, Siberia and Alaska to collaborate with the social scientists. Over the coming year, they’ll listen together to life stories of up to 120 young adults who successfully avoided potentially life-crippling obstacles and have achieved a balance between the modern world and traditional culture.

The elders and researchers want to learn, simply, what works on the path to healthy adulthood. They’ll share findings, created new links where needed and start new programs based on the new knowledge.

Wexler of UMass Amherst and the university’s Institute for Global Health, with colleagues from five other universities will hold their first meeting with Inupiat, Yup’ik, Sami, Eveny and Inuit community leaders at Cambridge University in the UK on March 29. Wexler, a longtime resident of Kotzebue, Alaska, agrees with co-investigator Michael Kral of the University of Illinois, who points out that “We’re actually hoping to see the knowledge go sideways in this study.”

This approach is more acceptable to local people who too often see power in outsiders’ hands, Wexler and Kral say. Collaboration is an appropriate model because the knowledge is ultimately being gathered to benefit the communities. The process will uphold respect for cultural identity, subsistence lifestyles, basic human dignity and values, and a concept known in northwest Alaska as Inupiat Ilitqusiat, or “those things that make us who we are.”

Inupiat elder Willie Goodwin hopes the study will “open some doors to figure out how to support our youth in doing their best.” He and the social researchers know that much previous research focused on negative statistics and risk factors. They note that indigenous peoples’ resilience and healthy adaptation have not been adequately considered, while the impact of colonial and contemporary suffering has been extensively documented. They hope to identify similarities across communities, young peoples’ strengths and resources, and develop new ideas for supporting them.

Wexler says, “Our study fits well into the larger scope of what the people are trying to create in their communities and in the circumpolar region. We are trying to build onto and learn from what the community is already creating.”

Joe Garoutte of the Kotzebue Tribal Council says his community “has changed a lot for the better in the last 30 years.” He hopes the study will show participants how change affects today’s youth. Natar Ungalaq, a young sculptor from the Igloolik and Inuit communities in Nunavut, Canada, is eager to be a part of the project. “We already know what the problem is,” he says. Ungalaq, star of the movie, The Fast Runner, adds, “We need action. This is action. Let other people see successful young people.”

Wexler expects setting up steering committees, deciding on questions, agreeing on shared focus areas and recruiting participants to take about a year. Data collection and preliminary analysis will be conducted in the second year, followed by final analysis. Results will be reported not only in scholarly journals but in community presentations and on the Internet. The researchers will invite interested youth and community members to help shape the scientific study.

In addition to Wexler at UMass Amherst, other co-principal investigators are: James Allen and Gerald Mohatt, University of Alaska Fairbanks; Olga Ulturgasheva, Cambridge University, UK, and Eveny native of Topolinoye, Siberia; Michael Kral, University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana and University of Toronto; Kristine Nystad, Sami University College, Kautekeino, Norway, and Benedicte Ingstad, University of Oslo.
February 12, 2009
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C. Marjorie Aelion named Dean
Effective January 1, 2009
AMHERST, Mass. – C. Marjorie Aelion has been named the new dean of the School of Public Health and Health Sciences (SPHHS) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The announcement was made by Charlena Seymour, provost and senior vice chancellor for academic affairs. Aelion will begin her new duties Jan. 1, 2009.

Since 2006, Aelion served as associate dean for research at the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina. She is also an alumna of UMass Amherst and received a Fulbright Advanced Student Award to carry out research in France as a senior undergraduate honors student at UMass.

Robert C. Holub, UMass Amherst chancellor, welcomed the appointment of Aelion. “She is a talented and highly skilled individual who will help us move this university into the top ranks of the nation’s public research schools,” Holub says. “We are very pleased she is joining our administration.”

Seymour says Aelion will bring solid leadership to the School of Public Health and Health Sciences: “We’re looking forward to her arrival and the energy and commitment she will bring to this important school on our campus.” Seymour also expressed appreciation, on behalf of the campus, to Nancy Cohen who will continue to serve as interim SPHHS dean until Aelion’s appointment takes effect.

Aelion says, “The School of Public Health and Health Sciences has great potential and I am honored to be chosen to work with the faculty, staff and students to realize that potential. I look forward to becoming an integral part of the UMass community, which has been so welcoming to me. In many ways, I feel I am coming home.”

Aelion’s research is in the area of environmental contamination. She received the National Science Foundation Presidential Faculty Fellow Award, one of 30 awarded nationally in all fields, in 1993. She currently has a National Institutes of Health R01 research award in collaboration with a faculty member in the School of Medicine at the University of South Carolina to examine metals in soils and their potential associations with children’s health outcomes. She has received funding from several federal agencies including the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Aelion served as graduate director for the University of South Carolina’s environmental health sciences department from 2003-06. In 2002 she was a Fulbright Faculty Scholar as well as a visiting professor at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands and at the ?cole Polytechnique F?d?rale de Lausanne, in Lausanne, Switzerland. She has been a professor of environmental health sciences at South Carolina since 2001 and was an associate professor from 1997-2001 and assistant professor from 1991-97. Aelion was also the assistant director of the Marine Science Program from 1999-2000.

In 1997 Aelion was a visiting scientist at Chelyabinsk State Technical University in Russia, and in 1995 she was a visiting scientist at Irkutsk State University in Russia. She has been an associated faculty member of the School of the Environment at South Carolina since 1995 and an associated faculty member with the Marine Science Program since 1993. Aelion was an appointed faculty member at U.S. Geological Survey in Columbia, S.C., from 1991-94 and was a hydrologist from the U.S. Geological Survey, Water Resources Division in Columbia, S.C., from 1988-91.

Aelion is a member of the American Chemical Society, the American Public Health Association, and the Association of Environmental Engineers and Science Professors. She also is a lifetime member of the American Geophysical Union and the Society of Women Engineers, and is a member of the American Society for Microbiology and the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. She is a managing editor for the journal Biodegradation.

Aelion earned her bachelor’s degree in environmental sciences from UMass Amherst in 1980, a master’s degree in civil engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983, and a doctorate in environmental chemistry and biology from the University of North Carolina School of Public Health at Chapel Hill in 1988.
January 2009
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Andrea Foulkes Publishes Introductory Graduate Level Text Book
Applied Statistical Genetics (Springer, 2009) is an introductory graduate level text in which Dr. Foulkes elucidates core concepts for the analysis of data arising from population-based genetic  association studies.  These studies  present an exciting opportunity to  uncover the genetic underpinnings  of complex diseases, such as  cardiovascular disease and cancer,  while discovering novel biological  pathways to disease progression.   This book provides students and  researchers with key genetic  concepts and statistical principles  that undergird the rapidly  developing field of genomics and  public health.

Dr. Andrea Foulkes is an Associate Professor in the Biostatistics Division of the Department of Public Health in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences.