My major scientific interest currently is understanding of multifactorial and multigene disorders. These common complex disorders represent a large majority of human diseases including psychiatric, metabolic, autoimmune disorders, and complex degenerative processes Examples of individual diseases within each class include:

* Psychiatric diseases: autism, schizophrenia, epilepsy, unipolar, and bi-polar disorders
* Metabolic disorders: Type 2 diabetes, obesity, mitochondrial diseases
* Autoimmune and inflammatory disorders: thyroiditis, systemic lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis, and Type 1 diabetes, as well as asthma and atopic disorders.

The identification of genetic factors primarily responsible for complex genetic disorders is a daunting task. Despite the progress in genomics and bioinformatics, there has only been limited success in identifying disease genes based solely on positional information from genome-wide screens. The incorporation of several complementary strategies in a single integrated approach should facilitate and further enhance the efficacy of understanding of complex multigene disorders.

The goal of the GEDI project is to develop an integrated bioinformatics platform for the development of networks-based disease models for discovery, identification and characterization of genes and gene networks involved in complex multigene disorders.