Hi, I'm Matthew Kmiecik from 23andMe

Introductions
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Hi everyone! I’m Matt Kmiecik, an MJFF funded postdoctoral fellow at 23andMe. I’m studying LRRK2 and GBA Parkinson’s disease with a focus on longitudinal data. It’s great to be a part of this community!

I’m a cognitive neuroscientist by training and am passionate about statistics, data visualization, and programming in R. I used to blog about R and hockey analytics (https://mattkmiecik.com/); now I just read and play chess in my spare time :slight_smile:

Please don’t hesitate to reach out; I look forward to connecting and learning about everyone’s work.

Best,

Matt

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Nice to meet you, Matt! We’re excited to have you here to talk PD!

But more importantly, any chance you can tell me exactly what’s wrong with the Washington Capitals’ power play this season? :rofl:

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Thank you! It’s nice to meet you too, Leslie.

As far as the Caps power play this season, I have no idea. But it does seem that power play goals in the NHL declined from 2007-2017 per this analysis I did: Matthew J. Kmiecik, PhD - Multilevel Modeling in R with NHL Power Play Data

My general advice would be to give the puck to Ovi as much as possible :slight_smile:

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Nice to meet you @mattk, and looking forward to welcoming you to the community later today with @danieltds.

Since you mentioned research on GBA, you might find this topic (Thinking about GBA classification) of interest.

Or, as a GitHub expert, do you have any quick tips/resource recommendations for GitHub (GitHub Platform)?

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Thank you @lmackenzie !

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Hi Matt!
Nice to meet you!
Could you tell us more about 23andMe converge with MJFF and your postdoc goals? I’m very ignorant on how 23andMe works in the research department!

Also, very nice plots! I think you might either enjoy seeing other’s or sharing yours in here: Reddit - Dive into anything

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Hi @paularp it’s nice to meet you too!

That’s a great question. I have a background in cognitive neuroscience and my graduate work focused on executive dysfunction in traumatic brain injury, human reasoning/decision making, and electrophysiology of semantic processing using EEG. I then did a postdoc that continued my training in EEG, but in the context of chronic pelvic pain and multi-sensory processing. I wanted to get back to my more cognitive roots in clinical cognitive neuroscience, and that’s what led me to discovering the wonderful research that was being done at 23andMe with Parkinson’s disease.

23andMe has collaborated with MJFF for a number of years now, including projects like Fox Insight, that merge genotyping with phenotyping. The goals of my postdoc are to use my training in longitudinal data analysis and background in the central and peripheral nervous system to glean insights in longitudinal progression and differences between LRRK2 and GBA PD. It’s been a great experience for me so far as I’ve gotten exposure to genetic analyses (like polygenic risk scores), techniques from epidemiology, and of course Parkinson’s disease.

And thank you for sending the Reddit link! I am passionate about data visualization and am always looking for great examples.

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