Arnoldo Frigessi
Curriculum vitae: activities 2003 – June 2006
Positions
2003 –
Professor in Statistics, University of Oslo (Professorstipend)
2003 –
Adjunct research scientist, Norwegian Computing Centre, Oslo.
Teaching
- Basic Medical Statistics for medicine students (held three times, ca. 150 first year students).
- Introduction to Biostatistics for PhD students and health personnel (intermediate level, with
exercise classes based on SPSS)
- Statistical methods for microarray data analysis. (A series of lectures for wet-lab staff, Phd
students and researchers with various medical, biological and bio-chemical background;
hold five times at UiO and once at UiBergen)
- I have given introductory lectures in statistical methods for microarray data at several
departments and hospital centres in Oslo.
- I have supervised 2 master thesis work (Scheel, Sørum).
Ph.D supervision
- Inge Olsen, NTNU Trondheim, 2002-2006, population dynamics. (Co-supervision with Rue)
- Ida Scheel, UiO, 2004-2008, statistical genomics. (Co-supervision with Glad)
- Egil Ferkingstad, UiO, 2004-2008, causality in statistics with applications to genomics. (cosupervision with Aalen)
- Ståle Nygåd, UiO, 2004-2008, statistical genomics. (co-supervision with Borgan)
- Ragnar Nesvåg, UIO, 2004-2008, psychiatric disorders, genomics, MRI.(co-sup. with Agartz)
- Hege Bøvelstad, UIO, 2006-2010, Statistical methodologies for prediction based on high
dimensional genomic data. (Co-supervisor with Borgan and Liestøl)
Supervision of post-docs:
- Bettina Kulle, NFR FUGE, Statistical genomics, 2005-2008.
- Petter Mostad, NFR GeneStat, Statistical genomics, 2005-2006.
Evaluation committees
- Member of the evaluation committee of PhDs in Norway (Jo Eidsvik) and Germany
(Susanne Gschlossl).
- Member of the evaluation committee for professorship in UK (Steve Brooks) and Finland
(Antti Pentinnen).
- Member of the 2006 committe to evaluate applications in all fields of mathematics of the
Swedish Science Research Council (VR).
- Referee of research projects for the Swedish Research Council, the Academy of Sciences of
Finnland, the Irish Research Council, the Danish Research Council.
Editorial activity
-
Associate editor of Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B, (2005-2009)
Associate editor of Scandinavian Journal of Statistics (2000-2005),
Associate editor of Journal of Applied Statistics in Business and Industry (2002 - today).
Guest Editor (with Jan Engel) of the special issue “Statistical modelling in European
business and industry” of the journal Statistical Modelling: An International Journal, 2004
- Referee for: Annals of Statistics, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (series A, B and
C), Scandinavian Journal of Statistics, JASA, Journal of the Italian Statistical Society,
Statistics and Computing, Stochastic Models, Advances in Applied Probability, Stochastic
models: an international journal, IEEE Signal Processing, Biometrical Journal, Extremes,
Computational Statistics and Data Analysis, Bioinformatics, Statistical Applications in
Genetics and Molecular Biology, Scandinavian Actuarial Journal.
Grants
Major applications under evaluation:
- Application for a Norwegian centre of Excellence, 2006 (SFF): Centre for Biostatistical
Modelling in the Medical Sciences (BMMS), in collaboration with key scientists at UiO.
This proposal has been selected for the second and final round among the 26 ones chosen
out of the 98 submitted ones. The proposed budget is 20 mil NOK annually for ten years. A
final decision will be taken end of 2006. Frigessi is deputy leader of the center, with AnneLise Børresen Dale, with Aalen as leader. (See http://www.med.uio.no/imb/stat/bmms,
http://www.forskningsradet.no/servlet/Satellite?c=GenerellArtikkel&cid=1146561010107
&p=1138710476468&pagename=ForskningsradetNorsk%2FGenerellArtikkel%2FVisMed
Hovedtilhorighet )
- Application for a Norwegian centre for Research based Innovation, 2006 (SFI): Statistics
for innovation. The center will produce core statistical methodologies, strategically
necessary to achieve innovation goals faster and more efficiently, for the benefit of the
centre’s corporate partners, and for Norway. Centre leader: Frigessi. Final decision
expected mid June 2006. (See
http://www.forskningsradet.no/servlet/Satellite?c=Page&cid=1138712971750&pagename=
ForskningsradetNorsk%2FPage%2FStandardSidemal )
- Applications currently submitted to FUGE:
 TransBase - a transcription database for cancers and normal tissues (PI with Heidi
Lyng and others)
 The Systems Biology of Breast Cancer (PI with AL Børresen-Dale and others)
 DNA variation and cancer (PI with Eivind Hovig and others)
- Application currently submitted to EU-SysMO: A systems approach to the TOR signalling
pathway in S. cerevisiae (PI with Ernst Wit)
Current grants:
- Helse-Øst: Statistical models for prediction and reduction of antibiotic resistance: 20062008. (PI with M. Walberg.) 1.2 mil NOK
- Norwegian Research Council, BeMatA: Statistical model selection, 2003-2006.
- Norwegian Research Council, FUGE programme: Clinical bioinformatics project of the
Oslo group of the Bioinformatics platform (with E. Hovig).
- Norwegian Research Council, Statgene: Statistics for genomic research, 2005-2009. PI.
About 7 mil NOK in total.
- EMBIO, UiO grant for a statistical service in statistical genomics, 2004-6.
- UiO Småforsk (university internal funding) grant 2006.
Current positions at international institutes and scientific organisations
- Scientific Secretary of the Bernoulli Society for Mathematical Statistics and Probability,
2004- 2008
- Member of the Steering committee of the research programme eVITA (e-science), funded
by The Norwegian research Council, 2005-2008
- Member of the scientific committee of EURANDOM, Eindhoven, 2004- 2007.
- Member of the steering committee of the UIO Centre for Biostatistical Modelling in the
Medical Sciences (BMMS)
- Member of the board of the Norwegian Statistical Association (since 2004)
- Member of scientific societies: Royal Statistical Society, Unione Matematica Italiana,
Societa' Italiana di Statistica, Norsk Statistisk Forening, Bernoulli Society for Mathematical
Statistics and Probability, European Network of Business and Industrial Statistics,
European Mathematical Society.
International scientific conferences and research networks
 Member of the scientific committee of the 7th Bernoulli World Conference and IMS Annual
Meeting, Singapore, 2008
 Member of the scientific committee of the 5th European Mathematical Conference, European
Mathematical Union, Amsterdam, 2007.
 Chairman of the organising committee of the 25th European Meeting of Statisticians, Oslo
2005. Largest EMS ever, with more than 600 participants.
 Member of the organising committee of the Nordic Meeting of the International Biometric
Society, Oslo 2005
 Member of the scientific committee of the 13th conference on Mathematics for Industry,
Eindhoven, 2004.
 Member of the scientific committee of the 19th International Workshop on Statistical
Modelling, Firenze, 2004
 Organiser of the European young statisticians training camp to the 25th European Meeting of
Statisticians, Oslo, 2005, with funding from the EU
 EU Marie Curie grant for the Young statisticians training camp to the 25th EMS, 2005.
 Past years: Since 2003, I have given more than 20 lectures, seminars and invited lectures in
many countries. Since 1987, I have been speaker (invited or contributed, plenary or in
parallel sessions) more than 80 times.
Main lectures in 2006:
(excluding those given by co-authors on joint work)
 Gothenburg. Invited lecture at the Stochastic centre workshop: Statistics for gene and protein
expression, May 2006.
 Vilnius. 9th International conference on probability theory and mathematical statistics, June
2006
 Cambridge, UK. Newton Institute. Invited lectures. October and November.
 Milano. Universita’ Vita-Salute San Raffaele. Invited lecture. September.
 Florence: Nutrigenomics EU programme. Bayesian functional genomics, September
 Centre for Biostatistical Modelling in the Medical Sciences (BMMS). Det Norske
Vitenskapsakademi. Two invited lectures.
Administrative responsibilities at UiO
 Undervisningsleder: Responsible for the organisation of all teaching given by the staff of
the Department of Biostatistics in 2005 and 2006.
 Member of the committee for the revision of the courses for first year medical students at
UiO, 2005
 Deputy section leader for the Department of Biostatistics, 2005-2006.
 Participating to a group re-organising the courses offered at UiO in bioinformatics.
Consulting activities within the Faculty of Medicine of UiO
 During the last three years, I had a rather broad consulting activity, towards many colleagues
and research groups of the faculty of medicine of UIO and its hospitals. I have been helping
with statistical data analysis, interpretation of results of inference, design of experiments and
data presentation, from very basic methods to more advanced statistical techniques. When
my help lead to papers, I most often did not suggest myself as co-author, though there are a
few exceptions. Often I have been acknowledged, as in these two examples:
Nielsen, CS, Price DD, Vassend O, Stubhaug A, Harris JR, Characterizing
individual differences in heat-pain sensitivity, Pain, 119, 1-3 , 15 December 2005,
Pages 65-74: “We would like to thank Arnoldo Frigessi for proof-reading the
statistics, giving valuable feed-back, and providing the idea for the reliability plots.”
Dag Berild, Tore G Abrahamsen, Stein Andresen, Egil Bjørløw, Irina M Kossenko,
Olga I Kubar, Michaela Lelek, Svetlana I Mintchenko, Maria F Pyasetskaya, Signe H
Ringertz , Galina A Sysenko. A controlled intervention study to improve antibiotic use
in a Russian paediatric hospital. Submitted to Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy,
May 2006: " We thank Professor Arnoldo Frigessi at the University of Oslo for helping
with the statistics."
 From 2004 to 2006, Embio, the Steering board for research in molecular biology,
biotechnology and bioinformatics at the University of Oslo, funded a consulting service in
statistical genomics, offering support, supervision and training services, with focus on
analysis of microarray data. The services is lead by Frigessi. About 80 consulting projects
have been running. These are part of PhD projects, funded research projects or planned
research projects. Researchers were affiliated with about 15 different institutes within UiO.
About 25% of these projects are leading to a joint scientific paper. The rest is to be
considered as basic consulting towards papers where we are not co-authors. About 15
statisticians have been active in this supervision and consulting service. The service seems to
be needed and effective.
 In addition to genetics and genomics, I have been consulting within clinical and
epidemiological research projects in psychiatry, psychology, gastroenterology, nutrition,
infectious diseases, pharmaco-dynamics, pain, drug abuse, cancer, cardiology, brain
morphology, among others.
Publications August 2003 – June 2006
Refereed papers
1. A. Frigessi, On some current research in MCMC, in Highly Structured Stochastic Systems,
Green, Hjort & Richardson eds. Oxford University press, December 2003, 1-5.
2. A. Frigessi, O. Haug and H. Rue, A dynamic mixture model for unsupervised tail
estimation without threshold selection, Extremes, 5 (3), 219 – 236, 2003.
3. K. Heggland and A. Frigessi, Estimating functions in Indirect Inference, Journal of the
Royal Statistical Society, series B, 66, 447-462, 2004
4. Lina Cekaite, Ola Haug, Ola Myklebost, Magne Aldrin, Bjørn Østenstad, Marit Holden,
Arnoldo Frigessi, Eivind Hovig, Mouldy Sioud, Analysis of the humoral immune response
to immunoselected phage-displayed peptides by a microarray-based method, Proteomics,
Vol. 4, n. 9, 2572-2582, 2004.
5. Sæbø, S. and Frigessi A. A Genetic and Spatial Bayesian Analysis of Mastitis Resistance,
Genetics, Selection, Evolution, vol. 36, n. 5, 527-542, 2004.
6. Engeland K., Hisdal H., Frigessi A., Practical Extreme value Modelling of Hydrological
Floods and Droughts: a case study, Extremes, 7, 5-30, 2004
7. Arnoldo Frigessi , Clare Marshall, Marit Holden, Hildegunn Viljugrein, Nils Chr. Stenseth,
Lars Holden, Vladimir Ageyev and Nikolay L. Klassovskiy, Bayesian population dynamics
of interacting species: great gerbils and fleas in Kazakhstan, Biometrics. 2005
Mar;61(1):230-8..
8. Kristensen VN, Sorlie T, Geisler J, Yoshimura N, Linegjaerde OC, Glad I, Frigessi A,
Harada N, Lonning PE, Borresen-Dale AL., Effects of anastrozole on the intratumoral gene
expression in locally advanced breast cancer, J Steroid Biochem Mol Biol. 2005 May;95(15):105-11.
9. Arnoldo Frigessi, Mark A. van de Wiel, Marit Holden, Debbie H. Svendsrud, Ingrid K.
Glad and Heidi Lyng. Genome-wide estimation of transcript concentrations from spotted
cDNA microarray data. Nucleic Acids Research, 2005, Vol. 33, No. 00 e1–13
doi:10.1093/nar/gni141
10. Ida Scheel, Magne Aldrin, Ingrid K. Glad, Ragnhild Sørum, Heidi Lyng, Arnoldo Frigessi.
The influence of missing value imputation on detection of differentially expressed genes
from microarray data. Bioinformatics 2005 21(23):4272-4279.
11. Mark A. van de Wiel, Marit Holden, Ingrid K. Glad and Heidi Lyng, Arnoldo Frigessi.
Model-based Bayesian analysis of spotted microarray data, in: Bayesian inference for gene
expression and proteomics, Peter Müller, Kim-Anh Do, Marina Vannucci editors,
Cambridge University Press, 2006
12. Erik G Jönssona, Bodil Edman-Ahlbom, Anna Sillén, Agneta Gunnar, Bettina Kulle,
Arnoldo Frigessi, Maria Vares, Birgit Ekholm, Birgitta Wode-Helgodt, Ingrid Agartz,
Göran C Sedvall, Håkan Hall, Lars Terenius. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor gene
(BDNF) variants and schizophrenia: an association study. Progress in
Neuropsychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry, 2006 Jul;30(5):924-33. Epub
13. Perminow, G., Frigessi, A., Rydning, A., Nakstad, B. Vatn. M., Incidence and clinical
presentation of IBD in children. Comparison between prospective and retrospective data in
a selected Norwegian population. Accepted for publication on Scandinavial Journal of
Gastroenterology, May 2006.
14. Agartz I, Sedvall GC, Tereniua L, Kulle B, Frigessi A, Hall H, Jønsson EG. BDNF gene
variants and brain morphology in schizophrenia, American Journal of Medical Genetics
Part B: Neuropsychiatric Genetics., Published Online: 1 Jun 2006. Epub ahead of print.
Posters accepted at international conferences, only with proceedings
15. H Edvardsen, B Kulle, GI Grenaker-Alnæs, AC Syvänen, AL Børresen-Dale, A Frigessi
and VN Kristensen. Chromosome-wide pharmacogenetics: localisation and linkage
disequilibrium of genes coding for ROS metabolism and signalling. Breast Cancer
Research 2005, 7(Suppl 2):P1.15 doi:10.1186/bcr1102
16. Nesvåg, Ragnar; Frigessi, Arnoldo; Agartz, Ingrid; Jonsson, Erik. Alcohol and
morphometry in schizophrenia. Early Psychosis Congress, Vancouver. 2004
17. R. Nesvåg, G. Lawyer, A. Fjell, K. Walhovd, A. Frigessi, E.G. Jönsson, I. Agartz. Cortical
thinning in schizophrenia. Winter Workshop on Schizophrenia Research in Davos,
February 4-10, 2006.
Not refereed contributions
18. J. Engel and A Frigessi, Editorial: Special issue on Statistical Models for Industry and
Business. Statistical Modelling: An International Journal, November 2004
19. Odd O. Aalen (red.) og medforfattere: Statistiske metoder i medisin og helsefag, Gyldendal
Akademisk, 2006. Chapter 14: Bayesiansk statistikk (in Norwegian). 185-294.
20. Arnoldo Frigessi, Probabilità e Statistica, Enciclopedia Italiana, XXI Secolo Aggiornamento dell'Enciclopedia italiana di scienza, lettere ed arti. 15 pages. 2006. (The
National Italian Enciclopedia)
Submitted papers
21. Ragnar Nesvåg, Arnoldo Frigessi, Erik Jönsson, Ingrid Agartz. Effects of alcohol
consumption and antipsychotic medication on brain morphology in schizophrenia.
Accepted subject to revision in Schizophrenia Research, May 2006.
22. Aalen OO, Frigessi A., What can statistics contribute to a causal understanding? Accepted
subject to revision on Scand. J. Statistitics (Jan. 2006).
23. Nesvåg, R., Lawyer, G., Varnäs, K., Fjell, A., Walhovd, K., Frigessi, A., Jönsson, E.,
Agartz, I. Cortical thinning in schizophrenia, submitted to Biological Psychiatry, June
2006.
24. Kyrre Kausrud, Hildegunn Viljugrein, Arnoldo Frigessi, Mike Begon, Stephen Davies,
Herwig Leirs Vladimir Dubyanskiy, Nils Chr. Stenseth. Climatic fluctuations forcing the
population dynamics of the plague host Rhombomys opimus. Submitted to PNAS, June
2006)
Papers before submission
25. B. Kulle, H. Edvardsen , V. Kristensen, V, Wojnowski, A. Frigessi. Allowing for
uncertainty in phase information in Linkage Disequilibrium-measures. Manuscript for
Human Heredity. 2006
26. Hege Edvardsen, Bettina Kulle, Ann-Christine Syvanen, Anne-Lise Børresen-Dale,
Arnoldo Frigenssi And Vessela N. Kristensen. Haplotype Structures within Given
Functional Pathways: implications on susceptibility and gene expression in breast tumors.
Manuscript for PNAS, 2006
27. Silje H. Nordgard, Therese Sørlie, Stephen J. Chanock, Anne-Lise Børresen-Dale, Arnoldo
Frigessi, Vessela N. Kristensen. Promotor composition predicts gene classes in microarray
expression analyses of breast cancer. Manuscript for BMC Genomics, 2006
28. Scheel, I, Frigessi, A, Aldrin, M, Jansen, P.A., A space-time model for the spread of
infectious salmon anemia (ISA) in salmon farming in Norway. To be submitted to
Canadian Journal of Fisheries & Aquatic Sciences, August 2006.
Papers in (advanced) preparation
29. Ferkingstad E, Frigessi A., Porleifsson G, Kong A. Covariate-modulated false discovery
rate. In preparation.
30. Fredrik Johanssen, Bettina Kulle, Silje Nordgard, Kevin Gunderson, Anne-Lise BørresenDale, Arnoldo Frigessi And Vessela N. Kristensen. Inherited LD patterns and somatics
chromosomal aberrations in breast cancer patients. Abstract 2006 Human Genome
Variation meeting, Hong Kong. In preparation.
31. Sorlie T, Jennifer Richer, Geisler J, Glad I, Frigessi A, Lonning Pe, Borresen-Dale Al.
Kristensen Vn, Predictors of response to endocrine therapy. Pooled data with UCSF study
32. Edvardsen H, Kulle B, Grenaker-Alnæs, GI. Syvänen AC, Børresen-Dale AL, Frigessi A,
and Kristensen VN. Provisional title: Chromosome-wide Pharmacogenetics: Localisation
and Linkage Disequilibrium of Genes Coding for ROS Metabolism and Signalling. To be
submitted.
33. Kulle B, Frigessi A, Wojnowski L. Optimizing Parameters in Genome-wide Association
Studies. To be submitted.
34. Cathrine Husberg , Alexandra Finsen, Arne Yndestad, Arnoldo Frigessi, Erik Øye, Geir
Christensen, Jan Kristian Damås, Lars Gullestad, Pål Aukrust, Ståle Nygård, A new factor
in heart failure development, In preparation 2006
35. Aas, K. , Czado, C., Frigessi, A., Pair-copulae constructions of multiple dependence, to be
submitted June 2006 to J. Royal Statistic. Society (Series B).
36. Bøvelstad, H. Nygard, S., Størvold, H.L. Aldrin, M. Lingjærde, OC, Frigessi, A., Borgan,
Ø., Gene selection methods to predict survival from microarray data, to be submitted to
Bioinformatics, September 2006.
37. Stenseth, N. C., Gjøsæter, J., Lekve, K., Ottersen, G., Chan, K.-S., Follestad, T., Frigessi,
A., Lingjærde, O. C. & Rue, H. The population biology of cod along the Norwegian
Skagerrak coast: a synoptic synthesis - and how this insights can be applied.
38. Fang L., Nygaard V, Holden, M., Glad, I, van an de Wiel, Hovig, E, Lyng, H. A
comparison of TransCount estimates of absolute transcripts with MPSS, SAGE, and QRTPCR. In preparation.
8. JUNE 2006