IEU Seminar: Melinda Mills from Oxford University

4 March 2019, 1.00 PM - 4 March 2019, 2.00 PM

Room OS6, Second Floor, Oakfield House

MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit (IEU) Seminar series

Title: The Science of Genetic Discovery: A Scientometric Analysis of Genome-Wide Association Studies

Abstract: Since the human genome was first sequenced in 2003, over 3,471 Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) examining 3,202 unique phenotypes have identified 75,349 associations. In this scientometric review we study and link all existing GWAS curated by the NHGRI-EBI GWAS Catalog to external data sources such as PubMed to analyze the drivers of this subfield of research. Despite an explosion in sample sizes, journal coverage, diseases examined and associations discovered, diversity in ancestries studied is now decreasing, with a marked discrepancy across discovery and replication samples. Participants of GWAS are predominantly recruited from the three countries of the UK (41%), US (22%) and Iceland (15%). US agencies (85%) serve as the primary funder, and we map the top funders by traits and ancestry coverage. Extensive manual data curation quantifies the characteristics of the most commonly used GWAS datasets and their core features.  Network analysis of authors and our unique ‘GWAS H-Index’ reveals author centrality clustered around a key group of data originators. We also provide evidence of structural gender bias varying across authorship position and traits studied and conclude with evidence-based policy recommendations for the future of GWAS.

Biography: Melinda Mills (MBE, FBA) is the Nuffield Professor of Sociology at the University of Oxford and Nuffield College. She completed her Phd in Demography at the University of Groningen (Netherlands), and has further studied bioinformatics and genetics. Mills’ research spans a range of interdisciplinary topics at the intersection of demography, sociology, molecular genetics and statistics. Her substantive research specializes in fertility and human reproductive behaviour, assortative mating, labour market, nonstandard employment and chronotypes, life course and inequality. She currently leads the ERC funded programme SOCIOGENOME (www.sociogenome.com). Mills has published various statistics textbooks in R on survival and event history analysis (2011, Sage) and has a forthcoming book on applied quantitative statistical analysis (2019, MIT Press). Mills serves on various Boards such as the Executive Council of the ESRC RCUK, the non-Executive Supervisory Board of the Dutch Science Council (NWO) and the NHS Digital Research Advisory Group.

 

All welcome

 

 

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