The Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics welcomes Hongmei Zhang, Associate Professor in Biostatistics at the University of Memphis, Program Coordinator for Biostatistics, and Director of the Division of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Environmental Health who will present: From variable selection to differential Bayesian networks. 

 

She will talk about selecting variables potentially associated with a variable of interest as an important step toward successes of inferences and correct identification of risk factors. Variable selection itself is of great interest and it is also an essential component in the construction of Bayesian networks (directed acyclic graphs) and testing of differential Bayesian networks. In some situations, the association can be reasonably described by parametric models such as linear regressions. In other situations, the association is non-linear in an unknown form and semi-parametric models are often applied to model the association. She will also present methods developed recently that select variables in linear models and semi-parametric models, and methods for testing differential Bayesian networks. The methods are illustrated using genetic and epigenetic data.