Xuexia (Helen) Wang, PhD
Assistant Professor of Biostatistics
Joseph J. Zilber School of Public Health
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Room 278, 1240 N 10th Street
Milwaukee, WI 53205
Phone:(414)227-3350(Office)
Email:xuexia@uwm.edu
Education
Postdoctoral Scholar, Department of Biostatistics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
PhD, Biostatistics/Mathematical Sciences with a concentration in Statistical Genetics, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI
PhD, Quantitative Economics, Capitol University of Economics and Business, Beijing, China
Research Statement
Xuexia Wang joined the biostatistics faculty in August 2011, after working one year as an assistant research professor at the City of Hope. Her main research area is in statistical genetics. She is interested in developing statistical methods and computational tools to identify genetic variants that influence the susceptibility to complex diseases such as breast cancer, colon/rectum cancer, lung cancer, and prostate cancer.
She has proposed three two-stage approaches to deal with the problem of multiple testing based on nuclear family data; a new association method to test multiple-marker association based on case control data. Local ancestry at a test SNP may confound with the association signal and ignoring it can lead to spurious association. She first demonstrated theoretically that adjustment for local ancestry at the test SNP is sufficient to remove the spurious association regardless of the mechanism of population stratification. Furthermore, she developed two novel powerful association tests adjusting for local ancestry.
Her current research work involves analysis of high-throughput genetics data generated from genome-wide association and next-generation sequencing studies. In particular, she is interested in population- based and family-based genetic association studies for rare and common variants, gene-set and pathway analysis, gene-gene and gene-environment interactions, admixed populations and genetics of gene expression.
In addition to methods development, Dr. Wang is also interested in collaborating with researchers seeking to identify complex disease susceptibility genes. Her collaborative research includes studies of searching genetic susceptibility in the development of breast cancer, colon/rectum cancer, lung cancer, prostate cancer, lymphoma, cardiovascular disease, childhood obesity, type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, and autism, therapy-related cardiac dysfunction and avascular necrosis after surviving childhood cancer, the secondary malignancies after hematopoietic cell transplantation.
Courses Taught
As a faculty member in the School of Public Health, she is teaching core MPH and PhD courses in Biostatistics such as Introduction to Biostatistics, Statistical Computing, and Biostatistics II.
Representative Publications
Sha Q, Wang X, Wang XL, Zhang SL. (2012) Detecting association of rare and common variants by testing an optimally weighted combination of variants. Genetic Epidemiology. Vol. 36, No. 6, 561-571.
Ferguson J, Hinkle C, Mehta N, Bagheri R, DerOhannessian S, Shah R, Wolfe M, Bradfield J, Hakonarson H, Wang X, Master S, Rader D, Li M, Reilly M (2012) Translational studies of lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2 in inflammation and atherosclerosis. Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Vol. 59, No. 8, 764-72.
Wang X, Zhu X, Qin H, Cooper R, Ewens W, Li C, Li M (2011) Adjustment for local ancestry in genetic association analysis of admixed populations. Bioinformatics. Vol.27, No. 5, 670-677.
Cappola T, Matkovich S, Wang W, Booven D, Li M, Wang X, et al. (2011) Loss-of-Function DNA sequence variant in the CLCNKA chloride channel implicates the cardio-renal axis in inter-individual heart failure risk variation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Vol.108, No. 6, 2456-2461.
Shen H, Bielak L, Ferguson J, Streeten E, Yerges-Armstrong L, Liu J, Post W, O'Connell J, Hixson J, Kardia S, Sun Y, Jhun S, Wang X. et al. (2010) Association of the Vitamin D Metabolism gene CYP24A1 with coronary artery calcification. Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. Biol. 2010; 0: ATVBAHA.110.211805v1.
Wang X, Sha Q, Zhang SL (2009) A new association test to test multiple-marker association. Genetic Epidemiology. 33: 164-71.
Wang X, Qin H, and Sha Q (2009) Incorporating multiple-marker information to detect risk loci for rheumatoid arthritis. BMC Proceedings. 3(Suppl 7):S28.
Wang X, Zhang Z, Zhang SL and Sha Q (2007) Genome-wide association tests by two-stage approaches with unified analysis of families and unrelated individuals. BMC Proceedings. 1(Suppl 1):S140.