05 April 2011

New grant for Nicolo Fusi

Nicolo Fusi, PhD student with Professor Neil Lawrence, is the recipient of an Amazon Web Services research grant for the PANAMA (Probabilistic ANalysis of MicroArray data) project.

Hidden confounding factors (such as differences in sample preparation, optical effects or laboratory conditions) represent a major source of confounding variation in gene expression, and they can greatly affect the quality of the results of statistical genomics studies. PANAMA is an advanced probabilistic method that can effectively correct for the effect of these confounders, while carefully preserving the genetic signal.

The grant supports the application of PANAMA to a vast number of datasets from different human tissues, making the results available to researchers across the globe.