
Current Research Interests
Ms. Liang’s primary collaboration is the Women’s Environment, Cancer, and Radiation Epidemiology (WECARE) study group. She has served as an informatics specialist at the coordinating center of the WECARE study since its inception. The WECARE study is a large international 22-center molecular epidemiological study of breast cancer headed by Dr. Bernstein. The primary objective of the study is to investigate gene-environment interactions in the etiology of breast cancer. The study’s aims are to establish a repository of biologic specimens, epidemiologic risk factor information, radiation and treatment records, and to utilize this unique repository in order to investigate the mechanisms and nature of gene-gene and gene-environment interactions that may influence susceptibility to breast cancer. Since 1999, she has been responsible for all aspects of the informatics related activities of the study, namely centralized information system development, data management, database design and implementation, data summaries, statistics and report generation, and web site design and maintenance. She also is currently involved in data analysis of the study.
Ms. Liang is also involved in the Epidemiology of Endometrial Cancer Consortium (E2C2), a NCI-supported consortium led by Dr. Olson. She combines data from many studies for the investigators to obtain precise information on risk in relation to genetic variants in the aromatase gene, which controls the final step in hormone biosynthesis.
Ms. Liang’s research interests lie in the design of centralized information systems for large-scale, multicenter, multidiscipline studies, data modelling, database design, data management and data analysis.