College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University

Statistical genomics
A national leader in statistical genomics, Dan Nettleton develops methodologies for gene expression research.
In high school, Dan Nettleton would spend his summers in the cornfields of northern Iowa doing those stereotypical Iowa summer jobs – pollinating and detasselling corn.

It's a pretty good bet that on his last day pollinating and detasselling, Nettleton figured he would never work with this again.

That was probably a safe bet when he never took a biology course at the collegiate level. And continued to be pretty sure when he was trained in theoretical statistics at the University of Iowa or at his first academic position at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

"When I came to Iowa State, I took advantage of the opportunity to more completely direct my research toward the rapidly emerging field of statistical genomics," says the associate professor of statistics. "It's a lot less physically demanding than working in the fields."

Nettleton spent his first few years as a "statistical genomicist" building relationships with researchers in the plant and animal sciences at Iowa State. The researcher who hadn't taken a biology class in college was quickly learning their science and objectives and learning about their use of emerging technologies for studying gene expression.

"I got really interested in these applications," he said. "By no means am I an expert in biology, but I understand the concepts to transform biological questions into statistical questions.

"It can be difficult at times but I'm able to communicate with my collaborators and understand their terminology. Actually it's far more difficult at the beginning of a collaboration but people are really good about helping you understand the crux of their problems."

At Iowa State, Nettleton has become a national leader in statistical genomics, developing statistical methodologies for gene expression research used by plant and animal science researchers.

He strives to understand the relevant scientific problems and then seeks to develop appropriate statistical methods before using those methods to solve problems.

"The more general the statistical tool, the less effective it is," he says. "I tailor methods for specific projects. Typically the methodology is based on a scientific problem from a specific collaborator (in the plant or animal sciences). We try to develop something better than what currently exists for these problems."

So far Nettleton's methods have been quite successful. Through collaborative research, he has had a direct impact on the success of many plant and animal researchers at Iowa State. He currently participates in over $13 million of sponsored research.

Over the past three years, Nettleton has more than 35 refereed papers to his credit, including many in both the top statistics and plant science journals. In 2006 alone, he published over 20 papers.