Susmita Datta, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics, has received funding from the NIH for her three-year project "Development of Statistical Methods for Analyzing Proteomic Cancer Data," beginning on July 1, 2009.  In this project, Dr. Datta will develop the statistical framework to analyze the mass spectrometry proteomic data. The proposed research will help identify sensitive and specific proteomic biomarkers of complex diseases like cancer. This research will enhance the capacity for understanding the molecular basis of cancer in general. Moreover, identification of the interrelationship between different proteins and peptides responsible for the disease may eventually result in clinical interventions custom-made for every individual patient.  This funding will also allow PhD students to get exposed to the computational aspect of high dimensional data analysis.