This research project aims to develop automated statistical methodology to analyze data generated by flow cytometry (FCM), a high-throughput technology widely used in health research and disease diagnostics. FCM is commonly used to define the overall status of the immune system either in healthy or diseased subjects by performing quantitative measurements on a variety of cell types belonging to the immune system.
Research In Motion (RIM) is a leading designer, manufacturer and marketer of innovative wireless solutions. High-quality reliable products are critical in today’s competitive manufacturing environment. To help monitor and improve their processes and products, manufacturers collect large amounts of data from a variety of sources including warranty claims, customer surveys, usage data, inspection, reliability testing and the manufacturing process. The goal of this research project is to determine how to model and make sense of these complex data.
Rescan Environmental Services has conducted an extended aquatic effects monitoring survey as part of the environmental assessment of the diamond mine operations in northern Canada. Yearly water and sediment samples have been taken over the past 12 years at reference lakes (those not affected by mine operations) and impact lakes (lying in a downstream gradient from the containment facility).
The BC Ministry of Agriculture & Lands (MAL) monitors antimicrobial resistance of bacteria found in chickens, swine, cattle and other farm animals. The program uses a complex sampling scheme to select animals to be tested, and tests for resistance to several different bacteria. For E. coli and Salmonella, resistance and MIC values for 17 anti-microbial agents are collected, and for Campylobacter, for 8 antibiotics. Methods of analysis and presentation need to be developed to summarize the data using appropriate statistical methodology.
The Pacific Ocean Shelf Tracking (www.postcoml.org) project is part of the Census of Marine Life study. Radio-transmitters are surgically implanted into fish (e.g. salmon smolt) and are tracked during their migration by a series of listening lines along the ocean shelf. This project will estimate survival rates as a function of time since release and distance traveled for fish as they migrate past these listening lines.
The nature of Statistics Canada's National Population Health Survey (NPHS) allows the use of event history analysis techniques to study relationships among events. The output from a series of health related questions to explore an association between pregnancy and smoking cessation was of especial interest. A methodology was proposed based on the notions of time order. In essence, the research team investigated whether one of the two events tended to precede the other closely in time. In this way, a causal interpretation of an association between these events would be more plausible.
Systematic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (SIRS) is an inflammatory response to a variety of severe clinical conditions such as infection, shock or trauma. An example of SIRS is sepsis, a systematic inflammatory response to infection. Sepsis is the most common diagnosis and cause of death among critically ill patients from intensive care units, occurring in about 1% of all hospitalized patients. SIRS is a complex genetic disorder involving a number of genes that act in conjunction with lifestyle and environmental factors to increase an individual's risk of developing the illness.
