Brooke L. Fridley, Ph.D.

The collaborative research interests of statistical geneticist Brooke L. Fridley, Ph.D., are focused on the genomic basis of complex diseases and pharmacogenomics.

Focus areas

Dr. Fridley's statistical research focuses on the development of new statistical methods to analyze genomic data. The need to develop new statistical methods is closely integrated with her collaborations with multidisciplinary scientific teams.

She is actively involved in studies dealing with the genetic epidemiology of ovarian cancer. In addition to these genetic epidemiology studies, Dr. Fridley is involved in a wide range of pharmacogenomic studies.

These collaborations involve both candidate genes and genome-wide approaches, in addition to multiple types of genomic data (such as genotypic, methylation, mRNA expression and copy number).

Significance to patient care

Discovering the role of genomics in human diseases will pave the way toward improvements in disease diagnosis, treatment and prevention. The findings from Dr. Fridley's research will result in the development of sophisticated statistical and bioinformatics tools for the analysis of high-dimensional "omic" data.

These tools will aid researchers in the analysis and interpretation of genomic and epigenomic data to determine functionally relevant loci associated with complex traits and phenotypes.

Professional highlights

• Highly Rated Paper, 100th Annual Meeting, American Association for Cancer Research, 2009
• Schulze Stewardship Scholar, Richard M. Schulze Family Foundation, 2008-present
• National Science Foundation VIGRE Fellowship, Department of Statistics, Iowa State University, 2001-2003
• Holly and Beth Fryer Fellowship, Department of Statistics, Iowa State University, 2000-2001