Description of the project

Click here to download a PDF copy of the project description.

Team Members

Instructors

Name Contact Location Role
Prof. Amy Herring amy.herring@duke.edu Old Chem 208 Supervisor
Yunran Chen yunran.chen@duke.edu Old Chem 022 Mentor

Research Assistants

Name Contact Role
Olivia Fan zimeng.fan@duke.edu Research Assistant
Ryan Mitchell ryan.mitchell@duke.edu Research Assistant
Bradley Bowen bradley.bowen@duke.edu Research Assistant

Project Meetings

Day Time Location
Meetings Wednesdays 9:15am-10:15am Old Chem 208
Thursdays 3:30pm-4:30pm Old Chem 208

Project Description

We are exposed to numerous environmental chemicals each day. We are interested in quantifying the health effects of environmental chemical mixtures, assessing joint actions, and identifying the interactions of combined chemicals. Analyzing health effects of chemical exposures can contribute to preventive measures to mitigate the potential impact of these exposures.

In this project, we aim to summarize advanced statistical approaches for analysis of complex mixtures and knit them to R tutorials to make them accessible to researchers without extensive statistics or mathematics backgrounds. This will include online tutorials to introduce advanced statistical approaches to scientists and to provide examples of their use using national survey data. A possible side project, depending on skills and interests, includes improving workflow using virtual lab notebooks for data collection and annotation.

Project Objectives

In this project, you will …

  • learn advanced statistical approaches on analyzing chemical mixtures
  • gain a working knowledge of these methods
  • be able to communicate them with people without extensive statistics or mathematics background
  • be familiar with the R language so that you will be able to apply these methods to answer scientific questions using R
  • use R Markdown to write reproducible reports and GitHub for version control and collaboration

By the end of the semester, we will have …

  • an online tutorial (this website) introducing statistical approaches for chemical mixtures analysis and applications using R
  • For students interested in research, we may consider a new research project focusing on developing statistical models and methods for environmental chemical mixtures
  • A possible side project, depending on skills and interests, includes improving workflow using virtual lab notebooks for data collection and annotation.

Important Dates

  • Friday, September 2 at 5:00pm Last day to accept applications
  • Saturday, September 3 at 12:00am First day to agree to contracts
  • Friday, September 9 at 5:00pm Last day to agree to contracts
  • 09/15 11am-12pm SuperFund meeting
  • 09/23 all day SuperFund Symposium
  • 10/20 1pm-2pm SuperFund meeting
  • 11/10 11am-12pm SuperFund meeting