Webinar: "Seeking Best Practices in Classifier Construction and Testing"

At UNC-Chapel Hill’s Eshelman School of Pharmacy, Dr. Jeffries’ research focuses on the design and interpretation of assays of small RNAs as agents of signaling that may be causally upstream of many other types of biomarkers. In the webinar, Dr. Jeffries will discuss the following challenge: while the construction and testing of classifiers of cases versus controls is a fundamental task of research programs, widespread failure to replicate findings remains a concern for research sponsors. One side of replication is testing the conclusions of a classifier with external data or random relabeling of samples. Many methods can be used to generate classifier functions from data, but the relative utility of these methods remains debatable, and modern, computer-based methods still find seemingly convincing patterns in random data. Hence, rigorous testing is needed, often in the absence of external data. To this end, Dr. Jeffries will present findings on a robust classifier method and a stringent testing method.

 

Orion Bionetworks is a Cambridge, MA, non-profit 501(c)(3) research organization that builds Bionetwork Alliance communities to assemble and integrate high-dimensional biomarker, biosensor, and phenotypic data and advance knowledge discovery through the power of predictive analytics and computer modeling to accelerate the development of new diagnostics, treatments, and cures for brain disorders.

 

Orion’s webinar series fosters an exchange of knowledge on the latest breakthroughs in a variety of technical fields including bioinformatics, computational modeling, biomarker research, and nanotechnologies, and discusses how these can be utilized to accelerate time to cure for brain disease. We are inviting expert speakers to submit proposals for future webinars on the above topics. Each webinar is 50 minutes in length, followed by a 10-minute Q&A with questions submitted virtually by the participants. All webinars are free and open to the public.

 

For any questions and to submit webinar proposals, please contact our colleagues at Percolation Communications (Gloria.Dunn@percolationcom.com).