Email: heather.cordell@newcastle.ac.uk

Research profile and key clinical specialties

Heather Cordell is Professor of Statistical Genetics and a Wellcome Senior Fellow in the Institute of Genetic Medicine at Newcastle University, UK.

Heather obtained her undergraduate degree in Mathematics from Cambridge University, UK, followed by an MSc in Applied Statistics (1992) and a DPhil (PhD) in Mathematical Genetics (1995) from Oxford University, UK.

The research interests of Heather’s group are the development and application of statistical methodology to genetic studies of complex disease.

In addition to being involved in a number of applied studies, Heather’s research includes the development of methods for detecting linkage/association (including maternal and parent-of-origin effects) using family-based data, and the modelling of effects at multiple disease loci (including interaction effects) simultaneously.

The methods developed in Heather’s group are applied to, and in part inspired by, the data and questions of interest arising from collaborations with clinical and biological research colleagues.

This includes collaborations in the realm of kidney disease, liver disease, infectious diseases and other clinical disease areas.

Two key publications

• Cordell HJ, Han Y, Mells GF, Li Y, Hirschfield GM, Greene CS, Xie G, Juran BD, Zhu D, Qian DC, Floyd JA, Morley KI, Prati D, Lleo A, Cusi D; Canadian-US PBC Consortium; Italian PBC Genetics Study Group; UK-PBC Consortium, Gershwin ME, Anderson CA, Lazaridis KN, Invernizzi P, Seldin MF, Sandford RN, Amos CI, Siminovitch KA (2015) International genome-wide meta-analysis identifies new primary biliary cirrhosis risk loci and targetable pathogenic pathways. Nature Communications 6:8019. doi: 10.1038/ncomms9019. PMID: 26394269
• Eu-Ahsunthornwattana J, Miller EN, Fakiola M, The Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium 2, Jeronimo SMB, Blackwell JM, Cordell, HJ (2014) Comparison of methods to account for relatedness in genome-wide association studies with family-based data. PLOS Genetics 10(7):e1004445. PMID: 25033443

Possible PhD projects

• Analysis of genome-wide association data in autoimmune and non-autoimmune liver disease

More information

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Keywords: Genetics, maternal, parent-of-origin, kidney disease, liver, diseases, clinical, Heather, Cordwell, Newcastle

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