PaGE career grant: Integrating causally informative designs and large data resources to understand the development of psychiatric disorders
Project description for PaGE carrer grant
Summary
The Helse Sør-Øst career grant has supported Alexandra Havdahl in establishing the Psychiatric Genetic Epidemiology (PaGE) research group at Lovisenberg Diaconal Hospital. In PaGE, we are in a unique position to generate valuable insights by combining recent advancements across multiple disciplines, and by leveraging data from multiple population cohorts such as the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort (MoBa) of more than 200,000 participants. PaGE has the following core scientific objectives: 1) Elucidating how genetic risk for psychiatric disorder is expressed in early development, 2) Distinguishing genetic and environmental pathways of within-family transmission of psychiatric disorders, and 3) Identifying causal environmental risk and protective factors for psychiatric disorders. The career grant will facilitate the group achieving these objectives by supporting our implementation of causal methodologies, consolidating collaborations with international experts in the field, and recruiting a talented postdoctoral fellow, with skills complementary to the current members, to carry out novel analyses.