Dylan Williams
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dylwil.bsky.social
Dylan Williams
@dylwil.bsky.social
120 followers 150 following 47 posts
Alzheimer's Research UK Senior Fellow, University College London. Studying the molecular epidemiology of dementia.
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Dylan Williams
neilmdavies.bsky.social
📢 Registration is open for Causal Inference in Practice — a 3-day short course at UCL
🗓️ 18–20 February 2026
Taught by me, @kdiazordaz.bsky.social & Peter Martin.
Learn to estimate causal effects from observational data.
👉 www.ucl.ac.uk/brain-scienc...
#CausalInference #Epidemiology #DataScience
Causal Inference in Practice Short Course
This course covers the latest developments in causal inference methods and provides practical explanations for applying them to real research questions.
www.ucl.ac.uk
October 13, 2025 at 2:03 PM
dylwil.bsky.social
Do any pre-print servers for biomedical sciences accept Perspective or Comment articles?

Most seem to refuse these types of M/S. I'd like to give some draft articles indexed / searchable presence whilst they get reviewed (& likely rejected) by journals, i.e. not just posting them to Github
September 30, 2025 at 8:36 AM
Reposted by Dylan Williams
michelnivard.bsky.social
Apply to do a PhD with me, Laura Corbin, Gareth Hawkes and George Davey Smith ( @mendelrandom.bsky.social) in Bristol on identifying rare effects on health using new and innovative methods. Amazing team, great educational environment, lovely city. Forward to your undergrads wrapping up!
Shining a light on the un-common to identify novel health risk-factors - GW4 BioMed MRC DTP
Project Code MRCPHS26Br Nivard Project Type Dry lab Research Theme Population Health Science Project Summary Download Summary Complex traits such as body mass index and height are influenced by a mixt...
gw4biomed.ac.uk
September 19, 2025 at 7:46 AM
Reposted by Dylan Williams
emmylooroll.bsky.social
Last chance to sign up for our MR course next week folks!
emmylooroll.bsky.social Emma Anderson @emmylooroll.bsky.social · May 22
Our in-person Mendelian randomisation course is back at University College London this autumn. Join us in Bloomsbury, 16th-18th September 2025.

Tutors: Emma Anderson, Dylan Williams, Neil Davies
Guest lecturer: Eleanor Sanderson

onlinestore.ucl.ac.uk/conferences-...
D79 Mendelian Randomization | UCL Online Store
Abstract This course covers the fundamental developments in Mendelian randomization and gives practical explanations about how to apply MR to applied resea
onlinestore.ucl.ac.uk
September 8, 2025 at 11:06 AM
dylwil.bsky.social
Just came across this graphical abstract for a paper. No idea what they were going for with the whale and rainbow, but at least it is very calming
August 12, 2025 at 11:21 AM
dylwil.bsky.social
Finally grappled w/ UKB-RAP to update a UK Biobank analysis in past week. Happy to report my sanity is (just about) still intact and I only wasted ~£8 of credit (£5 on a job left running overnight, £3 on other incompetence). Facilitated greatly by ukbrapR by @lcpilling.bsky.social, big thanks Luke!
August 1, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Reposted by Dylan Williams
richardsever.bsky.social
I have an idea… journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
July 30, 2025 at 6:38 PM
dylwil.bsky.social
Withdraw support for the current government of Israel
July 22, 2025 at 11:19 AM
Reposted by Dylan Williams
the-independent.com
BREAKING | Israel depriving Gazans of ‘human dignity’, says UK and 25 other countries in call to end war now
UK and 25 other countries accuse Israel of depriving Gazans of ‘human dignity’
David Lammy has joined other foreign ministers in condemning the Israeli government for depriving Gazans "of human dignity" as they called on the war to "end now".
www.independent.co.uk
July 21, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Reposted by Dylan Williams
emmylooroll.bsky.social
Fabulous work by Phazha Bothongo!

2 years and several near mental breakdowns for us both in the making!

🧠 Causes and consequences of vascular dementia across the life course: Evidence from a UK Biobank phenome-wide and Mendelian randomization study 🧠

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
Causes and consequences of vascular dementia across the life course: Evidence from a UK Biobank phenome-wide and Mendelian randomization study
Background Vascular dementia (VaD) is the second most common cause of dementia, yet its risk factors and biological mechanisms remain poorly understood. Objective To identify causes and consequences ...
www.medrxiv.org
June 25, 2025 at 4:06 PM
Reposted by Dylan Williams
neilmdavies.bsky.social
Are you looking to learn how to conduct and interpret Mendelian randomization studies?

You can register now for our in-person short course at UCL. With @emmylooroll.bsky.social and @dylwil.bsky.social

16th-18th September 2025.

Details here:

www.ucl.ac.uk/brain-scienc...
Mendelian randomization short course
This course covers the fundamental developments in Mendelian randomization and gives practical explanations about how to apply MR to applied research questions.
www.ucl.ac.uk
June 19, 2025 at 7:33 AM
dylwil.bsky.social
I love this paper ... so many insights, inc importance of ubiquitous exposures, a clear explanation for flaws of heritability (and analysis of variance more generally), and clarification of differences in "causes of cases & causes of incidence" by Rose, which I always thought obtuse and misleading
tomayates.bsky.social Tom Yates @tomayates.bsky.social · Jun 10
Needed to revisit this great Neal Pearce paper today

'a factor that discourages investigation of near-ubiquitous risk factors is the continued misuse of measures such as the percentage of population variation explained to identify ‘major’ risk factors for disease, genetic or non-genetic'

#EpiSky
Epidemiology in a changing world: variation, causation and ubiquitous risk factors
Abstract. We are all living in the era of globalization and, like it or not, it is going to change the way we practise epidemiology, the kinds of questions
academic.oup.com
June 11, 2025 at 11:46 AM
Reposted by Dylan Williams
michelnivard.bsky.social
This is VERY big genetics & health news, Regeneron (Pharmaceutical company with v strong genetics in medicine arm) is going to buy 23andme. investor.regeneron.com/news-release...
investor.regeneron.com
May 19, 2025 at 1:00 PM
dylwil.bsky.social
Our in-person Mendelian randomisation course is back at University College London this autumn. Join us in Bloomsbury, 16th-18th September 2025.

Tutors: Emma Anderson, Dylan Williams, Neil Davies
Guest lecturer: Eleanor Sanderson

onlinestore.ucl.ac.uk/conferences-...
D79 Mendelian Randomization | UCL Online Store
Abstract This course covers the fundamental developments in Mendelian randomization and gives practical explanations about how to apply MR to applied resea
onlinestore.ucl.ac.uk
April 28, 2025 at 9:34 AM
dylwil.bsky.social
Dislike this statement about AD by CARE programme grant invitation from @wellcomeleap.bsky.social and Lisa Mosconi. i) Commonplace misconception that "genetics = unmodifiable"...

#episky #medsky
April 24, 2025 at 1:53 PM
dylwil.bsky.social
One year later ... a major update to our manuscript showing that most Alzheimer's disease is attributable to the gene APOE. We expanded it to analyses of four studies, now with data on about 460,000 people in total.....
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
#Alzheimers #Dementia #Epidemiology #EpiSky
The proportion of Alzheimer's disease attributable to apolipoprotein E
Objective To estimate the proportions of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and all-cause dementia burden attributable to the common risk alleles ε3 and ε4 in the APOE gene Design Genetic association analyses i...
www.medrxiv.org
April 14, 2025 at 3:36 PM
Reposted by Dylan Williams
yairwallach.bsky.social
"We knew what we were doing. We knew about the indescribable suffering we were causing. We knew about the crimes we were committing, in real time. We knew, and declared for all the world to hear that this was what justice looked like, this was the face of morality."
If you're reading this, know that it really happened. I don't know where and when you're reading this. I'm writing from my home in Jaffa, Israel, the date is 9 April 2025, the time is 13:00. For years and years, we've said that "we need to flatten Gaza". Well, Gaza is flat now. But not because we needed to, but because we wanted to. We wanted to flatten Gaza, and we did it. We did it to the sound of roaring applause. The land filled with victorious cheers for every home collapsed and every family erased. We say we did it because of the 7 October 2023 massacre, to rescue the hostages taken on that day, or to make sure that a similar massacre will never happen again. I don't know which story will prevail as the accepted explanation for the destruction of Gaza in the future, but these are lies. We did it because we wanted to. We annihilated an entire region. At this point on the timeline, I do not yet know what will be of its more than two million inhabitants. We've already killed fifty thousand at least, probably many more. As for the living, I know their present is as bad as being human gets, and their future is cast is shadow. There is no future in Gaza. I cannot sustain life in its current condition, and any rehabilitation will take many years and enormous investments. Where things stand, we are blocking any offer to rebuild, any third party willing to take the Gaza Strip under its wing, as we continue the campaign of death and ruin. There is no past in Gaza. It used to have life, it used to have civilzation, but we annihilated any remnant of it. Universities, museums, mosques, graveyards. We didn't need to destroy them, but we wanted to. We wanted to erase any sign that life ever existed there. The countries of the western world supported the annihilation, or stood by. The United States funded and armed it. In Israel, all state institutions did their part. The academy, the press, the courts, the culture, everyone supported and legitimized. We all wanted to. Resistance from within was marginal and negligible, and we condemned those who resisted as traitors. The police banned any expression of resistance to the annihilation, and the public supported this silencing. The annihilation of Gaza became the national project, and we carried it out diligently and joyfully. Those who took an active part were lauded as heroes. We knew what we were doing. We knew about the indescribable suffering we were causing. We knew about the crimes we were committing, in real time. We knew, and declared for all the world to hear that this was what justice looked like, this was the face of morality. I don't know what I could have done differently. If there was anything I could have done to stop it, I didn't know what it was. I wanted to resist, and didn't know how. Writing this is useless, except for bearing witness to what had happened, and express my helplessness in the face of it all. This is how it happened. Tom Zandman, an Israeli citizen
April 9, 2025 at 3:18 PM
Reposted by Dylan Williams
dementialeague.bsky.social
🚨 New lifetime dementia risk & 2060 US case projections

🧠 This new 2025 study from John Hopkins updates lifetime risk estimates of dementia for the US. Data projects that 42% of adults who are alive at age 55 will develop dementia before they die, assuming current trends continue.

🧵 1/2
March 29, 2025 at 12:30 PM
dylwil.bsky.social
Been enjoying the focus on APOE at #AAICAPOE meeting by @alzassociation.bsky.social this week. Here's my poster showing most AD is attributable to APOE variation in four large studies
March 18, 2025 at 5:26 PM
dylwil.bsky.social
Delighted to start as a Senior Fellow for
Alzheimer's Research UK this month! As are my two chief mascots (help from Bluey here to keep them still). My research will look for ways to combat the bad effects of a protein called apoE, which is the predominant cause of Alzheimer's disease
December 1, 2024 at 8:05 PM