Background: The Human Health Exposure Analysis Resource (HHEAR) provides investigators access to laboratory and statistical analyses aimed at incorporating and expanding environmental exposures within their research. To benefit the broader scientific community, the HHEAR Data Repository houses deidentified epidemiologic and biomarker data from all studies accepted into the HHEAR program. To date, 46 studies including data from over 36,000 individuals are part of the HHEAR program. Of those studies, 26 have deposited their data in the HHEAR Data Repository. More information on HHEAR can be found at hheardatacenter.mssm.edu.

Description of Project and Data: To facilitate the secondary analysis of these pooled environmental health data, we are seeking to create interactive dashboards for the scientific community to access descriptives of the data within the HHEAR Repository. Data within the Repository are structured and include demographic, biomarker, questionnaire and health data. All data have been harmonized to a common ontology to facilitate harmonization across studies. As a complement to the dashboards, we will also be creating a series of analytic examples to serve as analysis tutorials. Examples of sample analyses include creating summaries of biomarkers of exposure and comparing them to population-estimates from NHANES, the application of mixture methods to pooled data and other common analyses using HHEAR Data.

Tasks: The selected student will work as part of a team to construct dashboards, visualizations and example analytic pipelines. Tasks also include data cleaning, harmonizing data across studies and creating shareable programming scripts.

Selected candidate(s) can receive a stipend directly from the faculty advisor. This is not a guarantee of payment, and the total amount is subject to available funding.

Faculty Advisor

  • Professor: Jeanette Stingone
  • Center/Lab: Epidemiology
  • Location: ARB Room 1608
  • The data science translation and engagement (T&E) group of the Human Health Exposure Analysis Resource (HHEAR) Data Center conducts numerous activities designed to advance the goals of HHEAR, including continued semantic mapping of studies, outreach to promote the use of the publicly-available data repository and promoting interoperability with other data resources in Environmental Health Sciences. We actively participate and lead community-wide activities aimed at increasing interest and use of semantic standards in environmental health science.

Project Timeline

  • Earliest starting date: 10/15/2022
  • End date: 5/30/2023
  • Number of hours per week of research expected during Fall 2022: ~5

Candidate requirements

  • Skill sets: Students must be proficient in R/R Markdown and have experience using Git/GitHub. Students should have some experience cleaning and analyzing epidemiologic data. Knowledge of/experience with Shiny and/or Microsoft Power BI is a plus, but not required. Student must be able to work in teams, including with more junior members of the research team.
  • Student eligibility: freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, master’s
  • International students on F1 or J1 visa: eligible
  • Academic Credit Possible: No