Overview: Oral cancer is one of the most common cancers globally, and many oral cancers originate from the oral potentially malignant disorders (OPMDs). Although the subjects diagnosed with OPMDs have an increasing risk of developing oral cancer compared with the subjects without OPMDs, the majority of the OPMDs may not progress to carcinoma. Therefore, the ability to predict the risk of malignant transformation for patients with OPMDs and to identify a small proportion of patients most likely to develop oral cancer is an important challenge in clinical. Identifying the factors associated with the malignant transformation of OPMDs is the basis for predicting the risk of malignant transformation. The project aims to look for clinical, environmental, and genetic factors associated with the risk of malignant transformation in OPMDs. For the identification of genetic risk factors, genome-wide approaches including genome-wide association study and whole-exome sequencing will be applied. Finally, based on the identified risk factors, we will develop some risk prediction models for the malignant transformation of OPMDs.

Program Structure:
1. Professional Lectures:
• Learning statistical analysis methods used in bio-medical studies.
• Learning basic knowledge in statistical tools used in genetic epidemiology.
• Learning principles and applications of genome-wide association study.
• Learning methods of developing risk prediction models.
• Understanding the principles of translational medicine.
2. Laboratory Internship:
• Training in literature review, study design, data preprocessing, and statistical analysis.
• Training in oral presentation.

Eligibility and Requirements:
1. Background in statistics, data sciences, life sciences, or a related field.
2. Ability to use statistical software to perform basic statistical analysis.
3. Experience in programming.
4. Proficiency in English.
5. Commitment to complete the full two months duration of the program.

Benefits for Participants:
1. Living subsidy of TWD 15,000 per month.
2. Opportunity to gain hands-on experience in genetic epidemiology.