Core Support Facilities

Biostatistics and Computational Biology Core

Thomas B. Kepler, Director

Marie Davidian, Consultant

Primary responsibilities are:

to participate in the CFAR research effort by providing experimental design and data-analytical consulting during the developmental stages of new projects and in the preparation of grant proposals
to work with investigators on innovative approaches to informatics and mathematical/statistical modeling

The supported areas include clinical biostatistics and computational biology, including gene expression and all aspects of nucleic acid and protein sequence analysis. In collaboration with Duke University Laboratory of Computational Immunology, the BCB Core also supports methodological development and mathematical modeling of viral and immune dynamics.

There are two modes of interaction with the CFAR investigators:

Under the first, new innovative projects are treated as collaborative endeavors with no charge-back to the client. The expectation is that compensation will accrue to the BCB as collaborators on grants and contracts arising from this new work. Furthermore, the BCB may gain the opportunity to submit applications for related methodological work.
Under the second model, ongoing projects with funding for statistical and/or computational biological work as well as industry-sponsored projects can contract with the BCB on a for-fee basis.

The BCB core is devoted to the establishment and maintenance of easy communication with the CFAR investigators and the other cores. The BCB director has expertise in immunology (and a secondary appointment in the Department of Immunology) as well as in computational biology and statistics, which are his primary research fields. The Core group will be trained to understand the science and medicine as well as the language in which they are expressed.