Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Faculty Member

Shelley Bull Ph.D.

Research Interests

• statistical methods for human genetics
• family-based study design and analysis
• categorical data analysis
• logistic regression modelling
• analysis of multiple outcomes

Education & Training History

1976 B. Math. University of Waterloo (Statistics)

1977 M. Math. University of Waterloo (Statistics)

1983 Ph.D. The University of Western Ontario (Epidemiology & Biostatistics)

1983-85 Ontario Ministry of Health Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, The University of Western Ontario

Other Affiliations

Primary Teaching Responsibilities

• Co-Director of CANSSI STAGE (Strategic Training for Advanced Genetic Epidemiology) www.stage.utoronto.ca
• Co-ordinator of a research seminar and journal club in statistical methods for human genetics research for graduate students and faculty in biostatistics and statistics at the University of Toronto

Professional Summary & Appointments

1985-86 Assistant Professor, Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, The Univ of Western Ontario

1986-91 Scientist, Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto

1986-93 Assistant Professor, Department of Preventive Medicine and Biostatistics, U of Toronto

1988-92 Associate Member, Graduate Dept of Public Health Sciences, School of Graduate Studies

1991- Senior Scientist, Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital

1992- Member, Graduate Dept of Public Health Sciences, U of Toronto

1993-2001 Associate Professor, Public Health Sciences (formerly Preventive Medicine and Biostatistics)

2001-2008 Professor, Dept of Public Health Sciences, U of Toronto

2001- Member, Graduate Department of Statistics, U of Toronto

2008- Professor of Biostatistics, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, U of Toronto

Honours & Awards

• 2001 Recipient of The Anthony Miller Award For Excellence In Research In Public Health to recognize the outstanding contributions to research of faculty in the Graduate Department of Public Health Sciences
• 2001 Best Paper Award from the International Genetic Epidemiology Society for the article entitled: Design considerations for association studies of candidate genes in families, Genetic Epidemiology 20:149-174, 2001. Authors SB Bull, GA Darlington, CMT Greenwood, J Shin.
• 2002-2007 Senior Investigator Award, Canadian Institutes of Health Research
• 2012 IGES Leadership Award, presented by the International Genetic Epidemiology Society in recognition of outstanding leadership through research, teaching, or service to the Society.
• 2015 Statistical Society of Canada Impact Award: Contributions to research in medicine, public health, genetics & epidemiology; development of statistical methodology; leadership, supervision, & mentorship in the Canadian statistical genetics/genetic epidemiology communities.

Current Research Projects

2018 – 2023 Mining genetic association data to discover and fine-map genomic regions involved in complex traits and disease. Canadian Institutes for Health Research Project Grant. SB Bull (PI), RV Craiu, AD Paterson. Collaborators: Brossard M, Hung R, Yoo YJ.

2019-2022 A unified polygenic risk score analytics platform for risk prediction, causal inference and discovery. Team Grant: McLaughlin Centre Accelerator Grants in Genomic Medicine PIs: F Gagnon & L Sun; Co-PIs: V Goncalves, L Briollais, L Wang, AD Paterson, SB Bull; Co-Is: D Kong, Q Sun, J Brooks, L Strug

2019-2023 Statistical methods for the analysis of genetic data with survival outcomes. CANSSI Collaborative Research Team Project L Lakhal-Chaieb (PI), RJ Cook, L Briollais, YH Choi, Y Yilmaz, SB Bull (Collaborator)

2020-2025  Integrative statistical modelling in genetics and genomics. Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Individual Discovery Grant. SB Bull (PI).

Representative Publications

YE Yilmaz, JF Lawless, IL Andrulis, SB Bull. Insights from mixture cure modeling of molecular markers for prognosis in breast cancer, Journal of Clinical Oncology 2013, Jun 1;31(16):2047-54. doi: 10.1200/JCO.2012.46.6615. Epub 2013 Apr 29. PMID: 23630217

CL Forse, YE Yilmaz, D Pinnaduwage, FP O’Malley, AM Mulligan, SB Bull, IL Andrulis. Elevated Expression of Podocalyxin is Associated with Lymphatic Invasion, Basal-like Phenotype and Clinical Outcome in Axillary Lymph Node-negative Breast Cancer, Breast Cancer Research and Treatment 2013; 137:709-719. doi: 10.1007/s10549-012-2392-y. Epub 2013 Jan 4. PMID: 23288345

LL Faye, MJ Machiela, P Kraft, SB Bull, L Sun. Re-ranking sequencing variants in the post-GWAS era for accurate causal variant identification, PLoS Genetics 2013 Aug;9(8):e1003609. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1003609 PMID: 23950724

SB Bull, J Graham, CMT Greenwood. “Statistical Genetic Modelling and Analysis of Complex Traits” in a special volume “Statistics in Action: A Canadian Outlook”, JF Lawless, Editor, Statistical Society of Canada, CRC-Chapman & Hall publisher, 2014.

Z Chen, RV Craiu, SB Bull. A note on the efficiencies of sampling strategies in two-stage Bayesian fine-mapping of a quantitative trait, Genetic Epidemiology 2014 Nov;38(7):599-609. doi: 10.1002/gepi.21845. Epub 2014 Aug 1. PMID: 25132153

JG Poirier, LL Faye, A Dimitromanolakis, AD Paterson, L Sun, SB Bull. Resampling to Address the Winner’s Curse in Genetic Association Analysis of Time to Event, Genetic Epidemiology 2015 Nov;39(7):518-28. doi: 10.1002/gepi.21920. Epub 2015 Sep 28. PMID: 26411674

YJ Yoo, L Sun, J Poirier, AD Paterson, SB Bull. Multiple-linear-combination (MLC) regression tests for common variants adapted to linkage disequilibrium structure, Genetic Epidemiology, 2017 Feb;41(2):108-121. doi: 10.1002/gepi.22024. Epub 2016 Nov 25. PMID: 27885705

CB Dean, SB Bull, K Nadeem, MA Wolters. Big Data in Biosciences, Wiley StatsRef-Statistics Reference Online. 14 AUG 2017 DOI: 10.1002/9781118445112.stat07989 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781118445112.stat07989/abstract

W Xu, J Ma, CMT Greenwood, AD Paterson, SB Bull. Model-free Linkage Analysis of a Binary Trait. Methods Mol Biol. 2017;1666:343-373. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4939-7274-6_17. PMID:2898025

S-A Kim, C-S Cho, S-R Kim, SB Bull, YJ Yoo. A New Haplotype Block Detection Method for Dense Genome Sequencing Data based on Interval Graph Modeling of Clusters of Highly Correlated SNPs, Bioinformatics, 2018 Feb 1;34(3):388-397. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btx609.

D Roshandel, R Gubitosi-Klug, SB Bull, AJ Canty, MG Pezzolesi, GL King, HA Keenan, JK Snell- Bergeon, DM Maahs, R Klein, BEK Klein, TJ Orchard, T Costacou, MN Weedon, DCCT/EDIC Research Group, RA Oram, AD Paterson. Meta-Genome-wide Association Studies Identify a Locus on Chromosome 1 and Multiple Loci in the MHC Region for Serum C-peptide in Type 1 Diabetes, Diabetologia, 2018 May;61(5):1098-1111.doi:10.1007/s00125-018-4555-9. PMID:29404672

O Espin-Garcia, RV Craiu, SB Bull. Two-phase Designs for Joint Quantitative-trait-dependent and Genotype-dependent sampling in Post-GWAS Regional Sequencing. Genetic Epidemiology, 2018 Feb;42(1):104-116. doi: 10.1002/gepi.22099. Epub 2017 Dec 14. PMID: 29239496

SB Bull, IL Andrulis, AD Paterson. Statistical Challenges in High-Dimensional Molecular and Genetic Epidemiology. Canadian Journal of Statistics, Special Issue on Big Data and the Statistical Sciences, 2018 Feb; 46(1): 24-49. DOI: 10.1002/cjs.11342

R Romanescu, O Espin-Garcia, J Ma, SB Bull. Integrating epigenetic, genetic, and phenotypic data to uncover gene-region associations with tryglycerides in the GOLDN study. Genetic Analysis Workshop 20, BMC Proceedings, 2018 Sep 17;12(Suppl 9):57. doi: 10.1186/s12919-018-0142-9. eCollection 2018. PMID:30263054

L Lakhal-Chaieb, J Simard, SB Bull. Sequence Kernel Association Test for Survival Outcomes in the Presence of a Non-susceptible Fraction, Biostatistics, 2020 Jul 1;21(3):518-530. doi:10.1093/ biostatistics/kxy075. [Epub 2018 Dec 26] PMID: 30590388

S Ah Kim, M Brossard, D Roshandel, AD Paterson, SB Bull, YJ Yoo. GPART: Human genome partitioning and visualization of high-density SNP data by identifying haplotype blocks. Bioinformatics, 2019 May 9. pii: btz308. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btz308. PMID: 31070701

RG Romanescu, J Green, IL Andrulis, SB Bull. Gene-Based and Pathway-Based Testing for Rare-Variant Association in Affected Sib Pairs, Genetic Epidemiology, 2020 Jun;44(4):368-381. doi: 10.1002/gepi.22291. Epub 2020 Apr 1. PMID: 32237178

YC Lin, JD Brooks, SB Bull, F Gagnon, CMT Greenwood, RJ Hung, J Lawless, AD Paterson, L Sun, LJ Strug; Genetic Epidemiology Committee of the Canadian COVID Genomics Network (CanCOGeN) HostSeq Project. Statistical power in COVID-19 case-control host genomic study design. Genome Medicine. 2020 Dec 28;12(1):115. doi: 10.1186/s13073-020-00818-2

O Espin-Garcia, RV Craiu, SB Bull. Two-phase sample selection strategies for design and analysis in post-genome wide association fine-mapping studies, Statistics in Medicine, 2021 Dec 30;40(30):6792-6817. doi: 10.1002/sim.9211.

M Dumont et al. Uncovering the contribution of moderate-penetrance susceptibility genes to breast cancer by whole-exome sequencing and targeted enrichment sequencing of candidate genes in women of European ancestry, Cancers 2022; 14(14),3363. doi.org/10.3390/cancers14143363

S Yoo, E Garg, LT Elliott et al. HostSeq: a Canadian whole genome sequencing and clinical data resource, BMC Genomic Data, 2023 May 2;24(1):26. doi:10.1186/s12863-023-01128-3.

C Xu, SB Bull. Penalized maximum likelihood inference under the Mixture Cure model in sparse data, Statistics in Medicine, 2023 Jun 15;42(13):2134-2161, Epub 25 March 2023. https://doi.org/10.1002/sim.9715

M Brossard, AD Paterson, O Espin-Garcia, RV Craiu, SB Bull. Characterization of direct and/or indirect genetic associations for multiple traits in longitudinal studies of disease progression, Genetics, 2023, iyad119, https://doi.org/10.1093/genetics/iyad119