Statistics and Computational Biology Group

Previous and current research
Dr Tavaré's research focuses on statistical methods in molecular biology, human genetics, population genetics, molecular evolution and cancer biology. He is currently building a group in cancer computational biology and bioinformatics that is involved in the analysis of data from a variety of microarray technologies including expression, array CGH, methylation and alternative splicing experiments, and uncovering the genetic basis of variation in gene expression. Dr Tavaré also studies stem cell evolution, part of a broader study of mechanisms of tumour progression. His research in Monte Carlo inference methods includes Markov chain Monte Carlo without likelihoods and approximate Bayesian computation, often applied in the setting of population genetics (for example, linkage disequilibrium mapping) or paleobiology.

Future projects
Research in computational molecular biology will cover topics such as:

• Methods for the analysis of microarrays (quality assessment, background correction, normalization, downstream analysis) on a variety of platforms (spotted, bead and oligo arrays), used in contexts such as expression, arrayCGH, methylation, ChIP-chip and alternative splicing.
• Quantitative methods for systems biology, including dynamics of regulatory networks and protein interaction networks.
• Statistical and population genetics. This includes the development of statistical approaches for whole-genome association studies and for understanding the genetic basis of variation in expression.
• Statistical methods for image analysis.
• Molecular modelling of cell lineages for understanding stem cell fates and cancer epidemiology.
• Phylogenetics and comparative genomics.