An intensive course on Microarray Data Analysis (3 credits), Finnish Society of Biostatistics  and Åbo Akademi, 3.-5.9.07.

Lecture material and course schedule is now available here!

Lecturers:

Jukka Corander, Professor, PhD, Department of Mathematics, Åbo Akademi

Laura Elo, BTK, University of Turku

Course outline:

The aim of the course is to familiarize the participants with the core characteristics of the microarray experiments, including the underlying molecular biological concepts, image analysis and the quality control involved in that, data pre-processing, and statistical inference, modeling and pattern discovery.

The course will take place in the BioCity/ICT campus in Turku, next to the Kupittaa train station. Each course day will consist of 6-8 hours of lectures/practicals. The course language is English. The lectures will be held in the Wikgren auditorium in BioCity and the practicals will be held in the computer lab A2065 in the ICT building. The exact schedule for practicals will be announced later at this webpage.

The course book is Amaratunga & Cabrera:  Exploration and Analysis of DNA Microarray and Protein Array Data. Wiley 2004. In addition, several resources available on the internet will be utilized, and a list to further reading on specific topics is provided. All practicals will be based on the analysis and investigation of real data sets.

Day 1: Monday September 3^rd , 10-16 in Wikgren auditorium.

Basics of the genomics, different types of microarrays, experiment types, image analysis, quality control, pre-processing of the data.

Day 2: Tuesday September 4^th , 10-16 in Wikgren auditorium..

Statistical inference related to the comparison of expression levels in various types of experiments, statistical modelling and pattern discovery.

Day 3: Practicals in the ICT computer lab A2065.

The number of participants during practicals is limited to 24, which is the number of seats available in the computer lab. However, the lecture room capacity is somewhat bigger, allowing up to 40 participants. To register for the course, you should contact Jukka Corander by email (first.last at abo.fi). Notice that course fees apply to  participants who are NOT students. The course fees must be paid to Finnish Society of Biostatistics by bank transfer to the bank account 800014-708153 (reference: 7003) latest on August 13, 2007. Fees: Society members 70 euros, non-members 100 euros, students 0 euros.

Pre-requisites:

The participants should have firm understanding of the central statistical concepts related to inference and probability modelling. As R software, including e.g. the Bioconductor package, will be used for the practicals, it is beneficial to have prior knowledge about the basic principles of R. Although this is not compulsory, we recommend that those participants that are not familiar with R, study some tutorial material available at the R website www.r-project.org. This will facilitate the work done with the analyses during the practicals. It is also beneficial to study some introductory material on the genomics issues related to microarrays prior to the course (see, e.g. http://www.dnaftb.org/dnaftb/ ), although these will be covered during the first lectures.

 Updated by Jukka Corander May 16th, 2007.