Yesterday, on 22 November 2017, AIAS Fellow Doug Speed received one of the attractive Sapere Aude Starting Grants awarded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (in Danish Det Frie Forskningsråd, DFF) for his research project ‘Methods to more efficiently analyse genetic data.’ The grant of DKK 5,592,581 will enable Doug Speed to advance his research by building his own research group and to employ two new researchers at postdoc level.

Novel methods for statistical analysis of genetic data

“There is great promise in personalised medicine. For example, given an individual's genome, it should in theory be possible to accurately predict their risk of developing diabetes; or if the individual is diagnosed with epilepsy, we should be able to use their genetic information to determine best course of treatment. But despite the ever-increasing amounts of genetic data being produced, we currently lack statistical tools to efficiently analyse these data and make personalized medicine a reality”, explains Doug Speed about his project, and elaborates on his focus:

“In this Sapere Aude fellowship, I will develop novel statistical methods for analysing genetic data, then apply these methods to large-scale datasets. I will tackle important problems in medical genetics, such as constructing models to predict disease susceptibility and severity, and classifying heterogeneous neurological diseases. Finally, I will make all my methods freely-available so other researchers can apply them to their datasets”.

More about Doug Speed

AIAS Fellow Doug Speed has recently moved to Denmark with his Danish wife to commence his fellowship at AIAS on 1 October 2017, arriving in Aarhus from a position at Genetics Institute, UCL, University College London. During his fellowship at AIAS, Doug will be working together with Aarhus University researchers at the Bioinformatics Research Centre (BiRC).

Read about Doug Speed and his Sapere Aude grant at DFF’s profile (in Danish only)

Read more about the Sapere Aude Starting Grant and the Independent Research Fund Denmark (Det Frie Forskningsråd, DFF)

With the ‘Sapere Aude Starting Grant’ of a total of DKK 165 million, The Independent Research Fund Denmark (Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond, DFF) has supported 29 excellent young researchers with research leadership ambitions and original ideas that will be of benefit for Denmark, and for advancing Danish research and internationalisation.

Contact

Doug Speed, AIAS Fellow, Postdoc
Phone:  +45 8715 3262
doug@aias.au.dk

Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS) and
Bioinformatics Research Centre (BiRC)
Aarhus University
Denmark