McNair Scholar 2017 - Brandon C. Hyde
Brandon C. Hyde is a senior at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities majoring in Statistics with minors in Mathematics, Biology and Leadership. Brandon’s research interests include statistical methods in cardiology, disease modeling and tobacco studies. Mr. Hyde plans on getting his Ph. D. in Biostatistics.
Quote from Brandon C. Hyde
My dream is to make contributions towards understanding cardiovascular diseases and other health disparities through statistical methods. I also want to help others become passionate about researching public health challenges in their communities.
Research project
Evaluating Methods to Identify Introgressed Regions
Abstract: The purpose of this study was to simulate genome data to understand how the program STRUCRURE infers population structure under different coalescent events. Simulations were run through msprime to answer the questions of whether adjusting the time of admixture, having an unsampled “ghost population” admix with a sampled population, and adjusting the time of a ghost admixture event affects the admixture probabilities output of STRUCTURE were evaluated. Statistical analyses including t-tests, correlation tests and ANOVA were used to examine the effects these coalescent events had on the probabilities of admixture. The tests showed that adjusting the time of admixture had a significant effect on the probabilities of admixture with a negative correlation as the time of admixture increased. However, a ghost admixture scenario did not have a significant effect on the output, and adjusting the time of a ghost admixture event did not have a significant effect on the probabilities as well.
Faculty mentor
Dr. Yaniv Brandvain is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Plant Biology in the College of Biological Sciences at the University of Minnesota. Yaniv received his B. A. in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic, and he obtained his Ph. D. in Evolutionary Biology from Indiana University. Brandvain also completed research at the University of California-Davis as a postdoctoral fellow. Some of Dr. Brandvain’s research interests include population genomics, flowering plants, and theoretical biology.