09/14/2026
By Joris Roos

The Department of Mathematics and Statistics invites you to attend a colloquium lecture by our new statistics faculty member Jiwon Park.

  • Lecture title: "Shared genetic architecture across complex traits: Applications and Extensions"
  • Date: Wednesday, Sept. 23
  • Time: 11 a.m. – noon
  • Location: Southwick Hall, Room 350W

Everyone is welcome!

Abstract

Genetic variants may be associated with more than one complex trait, and identifying these shared associations can be challenging when trait-specific association statistics are correlated. PLACO+ is a composite-null testing framework that uses GWAS summary statistics to detect genetic variants associated with two traits while accounting for this dependence. This talk will focus on applications of PLACO+ to lipid traits and inflammatory bowel disease, including settings with correlated phenotypes and overlapping study samples. I will also compare the findings with commonly used approaches and discuss how the identified shared signals differ across methods. Ongoing extensions beyond two traits will be mentioned briefly at the end.