Email: t.thornton@vanderbilt.edu

Education/Background

5/1996-7/2000	Renal Care Group, Inc., Nashville, TN, Database Development and Outcomes Data Analysis, Clinical Quality Improvement and Practice Management
12/1995	Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, BA in Philosophy
08/2000-Present	Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN
	M.S. Student in Biomedical Informatics
	Ph.D. Candidate in Integrative Neuroscience
	Advisors:
	Constantin Aliferis, M.D., Ph.D. (Biomedical Informatics)
	Jonathan L. Haines, Ph.D. (Integrative Neuroscience)
	Jason H. Moore, Ph.D. (Integrative Neuroscience)

Research Interests

• Machine Learning
• Genetic Algorithms, Genetic Programming, Grammatical Evolution
• Data Mining (clustering, mining association rules, hypergraph partitioning)
• Artificial Neural Networks, Multifactor Dimensionality Reduction
• Statistical Human Genetics (linkage and association analysis)
• Complex Adaptive Systems
• Modeling Genetic Complexity of Common Human Disease
• Neurogenetics (Alzheimer Disease, Autism, Depression, Schizophrenia)
• Neuroimaging

Publications

1. HAGEN MC, THORNTON TA, ZALD DH, PARDO JV (2002). Ventral frontal activation during somatosensory processing. Journal of Neurophysiology 88: 1400-1406.
2. MOORE JH, HAHN LW, RITCHIE MD, THORNTON TA, WHITE BC (2002). Application Of Genetic Algorithms To The Discovery Of Complex Models For Simulation Studies In Human Genetics. In Langdon WB, Cantu-Paz E, Mathias K, Roy R, Davis D, Poli R, Balakrishnan K, Honavar V, Rudolph G, Wegener J, Bull L, Potter MA, Schultz AC, Miller JF, Burke E, Jonoska N (eds). Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, GECCO 2002, New York, 9-13 July 2002. Morgan Kaufmann, pp. 1150-1155
3. Submitted: MOORE JH, HAHN LW, RITCHIE MD, THORNTON TA, WHITE BC (2003). Routine Discovery of high-order epistasis models for simulation studies in human genetics. Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing
4. THORNTON TA, HAKIM RM (1999). Rehabilitation of Dialysis Patients: Reexamining the Barriers and the Benefits, in Malluche H, Sawaya P, Hakim RM, Sayegh MH (eds): Updated Textbook of Clinical Nephrology, Dialysis and Transplantation. Desenhofen, Germany, Dustri-Verlag
5. THORNTON TA, HAKIM RM (1997). The Relationship Between Quality of Care and Financial Performance in Dialysis: "Doing Well by Doing Good". Advances in Renal Replacement Therapy. 4: 350-358
6. THORNTON TA, HAKIM RM (1997). Meaningful Rehabilitation of the End-Stage Renal Disease Patient. Seminars in Nephrology. 17: 246-252

Current Projects

• Informatics: A Comparison of Clustering Methodologies for Discovery of Trait Heterogeneity Using Multilocus Genotypes
• Integrative Neuroscience: A Semi-Supervised Approach for the Discovery of Complex Genetic Models Confounded by Trait Heterogeneity in Alzheimer Disease