Miriam Gjerdevik is a statistician with a master’s degree from the Department of Mathematics and a PhD from the Department of Global Public Health and Primary Care, both at the University of Bergen (UiB). Her research interests are broad and varied, ranging from publication bias in meta-analysis to epidemiological and clinical research questions regarding cleft lip and palate, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pneumothorax, and lung cancer. Her primary interests, however, are statistical methods and software development, with a particular focus on genetics.

Miriam’s PhD project was entitled Family-based genetic association models, which dealt with study designs that accommodate parental information and family structure in genetic association studies. She developed statistical models for the estimation and testing of non-standard genetic effects such as parent-of-origin effects combined with environmental exposures. Moreover, she developed a comprehensive framework for statistical power calculations in genetic association studies and compared study designs by calculating their relative efficiency. Håkon Gjessing was her main supervisor, and Haplin her main tool for analysis and software development.

In her postdoc, Miriam will continue under the supervision of Håkon. She will herself co-supervise two PhD students connected to the center, Siri N. Skodvin and Ellisif Nygaard. Family-based models and Haplin development will still be pivotal but with a new focus on adding DNA methylation to our analysis as well as application to START data. Miriam will also look at gestational length of children conceived with assisted reproductive technology and investigate the potential impact of more frequently induced labors and multiple pregnancies.

- In addition to her PhD, Miriam has already published several articles about statistical methodology, genetic epidemiology, and analyses of clinical data. She is a very promising researchers with a research profile that fits very well into the Centre’s activities. We look forward to seeing her further developing her research career in the coming years, says Håkon Gjessing, Principal Investigator at the Centre.

Miriam is situated in Bergen, with an office together with the Bergen team at UiB. She hopes to visit CeFH on a regular basis.