The mission of the Ritchie Lab is to improve our understanding of the underlying genetic architecture of common diseases such as cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and pharmacogenomic traits among others. The approaches we explore will involve the development and application of new statistical and computational methods with a focus on the detection of gene-gene interactions, gene-environment interactions, and network and/or pathway effects associated with human disease. Systems Genomics approaches, which involve the integration of multiple types of ‘omics data, is also a driving focus of the laboratory. These meta-dimensional approaches hold the promise of providing a more comprehensive view of genetic and genomic information.
All of these tools and methodologies that the Ritchie Lab develops focus on Big Data applications and emphasize improvements in visual analytics as we embrace the new horizons of genomic information.