This article is part of a larger project by The Michigan Daily examining University of Michigan research trends by analyzing academic paper citations. The Daily spoke with Michael Boehnke, Richard G. Cornell Distinguished University professor of biostatistics and one of the top ten most cited researchers connected to the University, to discuss his career and research. Read the other stories here.
Even though he teaches biostatistics at the University of Michigan and has made a career out of research on genetics, Michael Boehnke did not originally intend to work in the field of biology. Boehnke told The Daily he received a key piece of advice from William Bradshaw, an ecologist at the University of Oregon, that inspired him to combine his bachelor’s degree in mathematics with a new field.
“Up until then, I’d been focused on mathematics and liked it — and was even pretty good at it — but didn’t see what I was going to do with a math degree that I would find exciting,” Boehnke said. “When I got this advice to do mathematics and biology, I said, ‘Well, I haven’t had biology since the seventh grade.’ And the quantitative ecologist, who I knew reasonably well, who suggested this to me, said, ‘Who cares?’”
As a Fulbright Scholar in West Germany, Boehnke dropped his law school backup plan and took the Graduate Record Examination, a standardized exam that evaluates critical thinking before applying to graduate school. He applied via mail and international phone calls to a Ph.D. program in biomathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles, and while waiting to hear back, picked up a biology textbook for the first time in years. Boehnke said his love for mathematics was still strong, so a chapter on genetics caught his eye.
“When I read about this chapter on genetics, I started to think, ‘Well, this is interesting,” Boehnke said. “‘This is a field I might be interested in pursuing, because it’s very mathematical’.”
While at UCLA for his Ph.D. in biomathematics, Boehnke met Kenneth Lange, a computational geneticist. Boehnke said Lange, who would become his Ph.D. adviser, invited him to work on a project that inspired his future research.
“I met the fellow who became my advisor, and he had a genetics project,” Boehnke said. “He just had gotten his first (National Institutes of Health) grant and employed me to do some work. I liked him. I liked the project. I had this prior liking of genetics, and so that’s how I got into the field, and how I got into my specific specialty of trying to understand the genetic basis of human health and disease.”
In 1984, Boehnke became an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. Since then, he has become the director of the U-M Center for Statistical Genetics and the U-M Genome Science Training Program. Boehnke said his research involves statistical genetics, a field that uses statistics to examine, understand and analyze genetic data.
“My research focuses on statistical genetics, with a particular desire to help understand the genetic basis of human health and disease, recognizing that genetics is only a small part of it, but that it is a part that we can measure and address and try to learn something from,” Boehnke said.
For more than 40 years, Boehnke has developed computational tools and statistical methods that allow other researchers to analyze genetic data. Boehnke said he believes these tools have made an impactful contribution to the field and still enjoys seeing them in use.
“I always tell my trainees, ‘Don’t get too much ego tied up in your science because you lose objectivity’,” Boehnke said. “But I have to confess, even at age 68, when I see other people using tools that my students or trainees and I have developed, or colleagues have developed, I still get excited.”
Aside from creating statistical tools, Boehnke also studies human diseases to understand their genetic basis and components. His work often revolves around type 2 diabetes, a disease in which the pancreas generates a limited amount of insulin. Boehnke also participates in genome-wide association studies, in which researchers attempt to locate regions of the human genome where certain genetic variations relate to diseases. Between 2005 and 2007, Boehnke said he combined data with colleagues on a GWAS that helped to uncover genome regions related to type 2 diabetes, a collaborative approach that is now standard within the field.
“I worked with and got together with two colleagues who were also in the process of doing the same sort of study, but in different samples, and we agreed even before we had our data, ‘You know, let’s just share our data’,” Boehnke said. “‘Let’s put our data together, because with three samples, rather than one sample, we’re going to have greater statistical power.’ The result was we identified nine regions: three that were already known, but six new ones that predisposed (people) to type 2 diabetes.”
While working on that GWAS project, Boehnke said the success of his work depended on trust between researchers and a collaborative, cooperative mindset.
“We were lucky that none of us were so focused on our own individual success that we couldn’t work together, and we trusted each other,” Boehnke said. “I’ve told my trainees for a long time that it was important, and it still is important, that I’m a good statistician and a good geneticist. But what is most important in terms of these kinds of studies is that people trust me and trust the other leaders in the kind of work we do, and so people are willing to share their ideas, willing to share their data in a way they wouldn’t if you didn’t trust people.”
Over the course of his career, Boehnke has received about 190,000 citations on Google Scholar as of publication. He said that participating in research such as GWAS projects that often have many authors, could be the reason why his work is well-cited.
“Obviously we do good work, but we also are highly collaborative,” Boehnke said. “We certainly end up with lots of papers, and we end up with lots of highly cited papers because we have very large samples. So, I’m not going to be overly humble and say I haven’t done good work, but that very large number of citations is in large part because of the nature of the field.”
Despite amassing a significant amount of citations, Boehnke said he has contributed to certain papers more than others, and therefore doesn’t believe citations can accurately represent success in research.Instead of citations, Boehnke said he believes it is his legacy as a mentor to doctoral students that has contributed to his career success.
“In my teaching for my doctoral students, I see them as my greatest contribution in terms of teaching, because they’re off and doing wonderful things as scientists,” Boehnke said. “I’m very proud of them, my pedigree, if you will, where I look at my students and my students’ students, who are sort of my academic grandchildren, and going on from there.”
In a year and a half, Boehnke will earn emeritus status at the University, but said he feels grateful to have experienced the jobs of teaching and researching.
“Being a faculty member is, for me, an unbelievably great job,” Boehnke said. “They pay me good money to do the kind of thing that I’ve said for many years I’d do for free. … I plan to be an active emeritus professor, and so at that point, I will be doing it for free. But it’s such a great job. It’s such a great set of opportunities to be working with great people, to be focused on learning. I feel very blessed in that regard.”
Daily News Editor Marissa Corsi can be reached at macorsi@umich.edu.
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