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Research Area: Computational Genomics

Tarek Zikry

November 4, 2024

Tarek Zikry, PhD

Assistant Professor of School of Data Science and Society (Starting July 2025)

Core Faculty
Phone: N/A | Office: ITS Manning School of Data Science and Society
Email: tarek@unc.edu | Website: http://www.zikrylab.com/

Research Areas: Bioinformatics, Computational Genomics, Computational Systems Biology, Statistical and Population Genetics
Research Interests: I am interested in the intersection of precision medicine and and data science, specifically topics in dimensionality reduction, single-cell omics, and statistical machine learning across applications in cancer, neuroscience, and public health.

Daiwei (David) Zhang

October 21, 2024

Daiwei (David) Zhang, PhD

Assistant Professor of Biostatistics and Genetics

Core Faculty
Phone: (734) 707-7519 | Office: 3107E McGavran-Greenberg Hall
Email: daiwei_zhang@med.unc.edu | Website: https://sph.unc.edu/adv_profile/david-zhang/

Research Areas: Image Analysis, Computational Genomics, Statistical and Population Genetics, Bioinformatics
Research Interests: My research focuses on developing novel artificial intelligence / machine learning frameworks to advance critical biomedical and health care domains, including spatial omics, computational pathology, medical imaging and text analysis.

Sarah Linnstaedt, PhD

April 2, 2024

Sarah Linnstaedt, PhD

Associate Professor of Anesthesiology

Resource Faculty
Phone: 919-966-5136 | Office: 120 Taylor Hall
Email: sarah_linnstaedt@med.unc.edu | Website: https://www.med.unc.edu/anesthesiology/research/linnstaedt-lab/

Research Areas: Bioinformatics, Computational Genomics, Computational Systems Biology, Statistical and Population Genetics
Research Interests: We are interested in understanding the recovery process following traumatic stress exposures and use large-scale molecular and genetic human cohort data from trauma survivors to better understand risk factors and mechanisms driving adverse outcomes such as chronic pain, posttraumatic stress, and depression.

Qingyun Liu, PhD

October 12, 2023

Qingyun Liu, PhD

Assistant Professor of Genetics

Core Faculty
Phone: 919-843-6471 | Office: 5061 Genetic Medicine Building
Email: Qingyun_Liu@med.unc.edu | Website: https://qingyunliulab.com/

Research Areas: Population genomics, Bacterial evolution, Infectious disease, Antibiotic resistance, Pathogenicity
Research Interests: Infectious diseases due to highly pathogenic microbes continue to pose a persistent and evolving threat to humans. The Liu lab studies the evolutionary mechanisms underlying drug resistance and transmissibility in bacterial pathogens, including Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium abscessus, among others.

Tessa Andermann, MD MPH

December 12, 2022

Tessa Andermann, MD MPH

Assistant Professor of Medicine

Resource Faculty
Phone: 919-843-0834 | Office: 2341E Medical Biomolecular Research Building
Email: tessa_andermann@med.unc.edu | Website: https://www.med.unc.edu/medicine/infdis/directory/tessa-andermann/

Research Areas: Bioinformatics, Computational Genomics
Research Interests: As an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at UNC-Chapel Hill, Tessa Andermann, MD, MPH, conducts multi-disciplinary research focused on investigating the impact of the intestinal microbiome on cancer outcomes. Her current projects include: 1) Investigating the role of the gut antimicrobial “resistome” in the development of bloodstream and other infections with multi-drug-resistant organisms in patients with hematologic malignancies, 2) developing microbial predictors of therapeutic efficacy and therapy-related gastrointestinal complications following administration of cellular and other immunotherapies in patients with cancer, and 3) using the intestinal microbiome as a tool to inform antimicrobial stewardship in immunocompromised patients.

Brian Miller, MD PhD

February 25, 2022

Brian Miller, MD PhD

Assistant Professor of Medicine, Division of Oncology

Resource Faculty
Phone: 919-966-7763 | Office: 5202 Marsico Hall
Email: BrianMiller@med.unc.edu | Website: http://www.themillerlab.org/

Research Areas: Bioinformatics, Computational Systems Biology, Computational Genomics
Research Interests: The Miller lab is working to improve the efficacy of immunotherapy to treat cancer. Using single-cell transcriptomic and epigenetic techniques, along with functional genomic approaches, we want to understand the determinants of immune cell differentiation and function in the tumor microenvironment.

Laura Raffield, PhD

January 26, 2022

Laura Raffield, PhD

Assistant Professor of Genetics

Core Faculty
Phone: (919) 966-7255 | Office: 5042 Genetic Medicine Building
Email: raffield@email.unc.edu | Website: https://www.med.unc.edu/genetics/directory/laura-raffield-phd/

Research Areas: Computational Genomics, Statistical and Population Genetics
Research Interests: My research program uses human genomics and multi-omics to understand inherited and environmental risk factors for cardiometabolic diseases, Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, and related quantitative traits, particularly in understudied African American and Hispanic/Latino populations.

Shawn Ahmed, PhD

November 12, 2021

Shawn Ahmed, PhD

Professor of Genetics and Biology

Resource Faculty
Phone: 919-843-4780 | Office: 216 Fordham Hall
Email: shawn@med.unc.edu | Website: http://labs.bio.unc.edu/ahmed/

Research Areas: Bioinformatics, Comparative Genomics and Molecular Evolution, Computational Genomics
Research Interests: We are interested in understanding potential functions of nuclear foci that are composed of telomere binding proteins, whose levels can be altered for several generations by a single gamete. This novel form of epigenetic inheritance may be relevant to roles that telomeres play in human aging, in cancer biology, and potentially to the mysterious relationship of environmental stress with human telomere length. We primarily study the nematode C. elegans but are also in translating our work to human biology. We are broadly interested in creative approaches to study telomere biology, genome silencing, small RNAs and transgenerational epigenetic inheritance.

Jeremy Wang, PhD

November 1, 2021

Jeremy Wang, PhD

Associate Professor of Pathology Lab Medicine & Genetics

Core Faculty
Phone: (919) 886-4006 | Office: 3144 Genome Sciences Building
Email: jeremy_wang@med.unc.edu | Website: http://jwanglab.org/

Research Areas: Bioinformatics, Computational Genomics
Research Interests: Genomic epidemiology of bacterial and viral pathogens, from E. coli to SARS-CoV-2; Metagenomics of the mucosa-associated gut microbiome; Machine-learning classification of pediatric cancers using nanopore sequencing of full-length transcriptomes.