Dear all, The next seminar in our series of statistics talks for people interested in quantitative methods in biology and medicine will take place on *Thursday 14 November 2013 at 14h00* (not 11:00!) in the Salle Delachaux (Biopôle 2, premier étage, Route de la Corniche 10, Lausanne, M2: Vennes). The speaker will be *Sina Rüeger* (UNIL) who will speak about "Hunting for rare genetic determinants of psychiatric traits" Abstract: Only little is known about the genetic architecture of psychological disorders (e.g. bipolar disorder, major depression disorder, or cocaine dependence); they are assumed to be highly complex and heterogenous traits. Very few common variants have been identified, thus it is also assumed that rare variants may play an important role. To understand the role of rare variants in psychological disorders and the relation between phenotypes we analysed the sequencing data (including rare variants) using the psychiatric arm of the Colaus study cohort. The talk will focus on difficulties arising from rare variant associations, i.e. the standard methods are not necessarily adequate in this setting. Different “variant burden tests”, designed to analyse rare variants, will be presented; regression based collapsing methods and kernel association tests (SKAT). If time permits, I will also present a strategy of how to combine multiple phenotypes to improve statistical power (some psychiatric traits might be highly correlated, and thus are assumed to have similar genetic risk factors). Hope to see you there! Frédéric (for the organizers: Jérôme Goudet, Valentin Rousson, Frédéric Schütz)