Syllabus

Each day of the course will focus on one topic, or several closely related topics, which will be presented by one or more of the Workshop faculty members.

Depending on session and timezone, meetings may be the day after the listed date for some students.

Day 0: Before the start of the course

  • Topics: Accessing the ISG Workshop cloud environment, ISGW Forum

Day 1: June 1, 2026; Background

  • Lead: Loïc Yengo
  • Topics: biometrical modeling; population genetics; data sources; ethics and historical context; simulations and PCA

Day 2: June 2, 2026; Working with data

  • Lead: Elizabeth Prom-Wormley
  • Topics: assumptions, QC, imputation, PLINK and R basics, phenotype distributions, and transformations

Day 3: June 3, 2026; Modeling genetic and environmental components

  • Leads: Hermine Maes and Sarah Medland
  • Topics: heritability, variance components, matrix approaches, IBD vs IBS, family and twin modeling

Day 4: June 4, 2026; Genome wide association studies

  • Lead: Abdel Abdellaoui
  • Topics: Historical overview, PLINK, LMM GWAS, RAP, METAL, rGE and assortative mating, within-family GWAS, interpretation

Day 5: June 8, 2026; Prediction

  • Lead: Jian Zeng
  • Topics: prediction theory, ROC analysis, polygenic risk scores, SBayesRC, G×E applications

Day 6: June 9, 2026; Multivariate Concepts

  • Lead: Andrew Grotzinger
  • Topics: genetic correlations, LD-score regression, Genomic SEM

Day 7: June 10, 2026; Causation

  • Lead: David Evans
  • Topics: causal inference, Mendelian randomization (univariate and multivariate), longitudinal and family-based designs, genetic confounding

Day 8: June 11, 2026; Biological Interpretation

  • Lead: Benjamin Neale
  • Topics: rare variants, fine mapping, TWAS, omics integration, cross-ancestry and AI-based prediction