Skip to main content

Research Area: Statistical and Populational Genetics

Parul Johri

November 14, 2024

Parul Johri, PhD

Assistant Professor of Biology and Genetics

Core Faculty
Phone: 919-843-7700 | Office: 3157 Genome Sciences Building
Email: pjohri@unc.edu | Website: https://www.johrilab.org/

Research Areas: Population Genetics, Evolutionary Genomics, Statistical Inference
Research Interests: Our lab is interested in how evolutionary processes like changes in population size, recombination rate, direct and indirect effects of selection, and factors such as genome architecture shape patterns of genomic variation. Work in the lab involves employing computational, theoretical, and statistical approaches, including method development, to perform evolutionary inference and ask fundamental questions in population genetics. Areas of research: inference of selection and demography, evolution of gene duplicates, and population genetics in unicellular pathogenic species.

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: (919) 966-7281 | 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.

Xihao Li, PhD

February 23, 2024

Xihao Li, PhD

Assistant Professor of Biostatistics & Genetics

Core Faculty
Phone: (919) 843-3656* | Office: 4115D McGavran-Greenberg Hall*
Email: xihaoli@unc.edu | Website: https://xihaoli.org

Research Areas: Bioinformatics; Statistical and Population Genetics
Research Interests: My research interests lie in developing novel statistical methods and computational tools that (1) enable scalable and integrative analysis of large-scale whole-genome/whole-exome sequencing (WGS/WES) data and multi-omics data, (2) empower meta-analysis of large-scale sequencing data of ancestrally-diverse consortiums and biobanks, and (3) prioritize putative causal genetic variants using functional annotation data to better understand the relationships among genomic variation, genome function, and phenotypes.

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.

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.

Christoph Rau

March 11, 2020

Christoph Rau, PhD

Assistant Professor of Genetics & Computational Medicine

Core Faculty
Phone: 919-962-5641 | Office: 11004B Mary Ellen Jones Building
Email: ChristophRau@unc.edu | Website: https://raulab.web.unc.edu/

Research Areas: Bioinformatics, Computational Genomics, Computational Systems Biology, Statistical and Population Genetics
Research Interests: The Rau lab utilizes populations of mice to study the transcriptomic and epigenomic landscape underlying cardiovascular disorders using a combination of wet and dry-lab techniques.

Daniel Schrider, PhD

August 30, 2018

Daniel Schrider, PhD

Associate Professor of Genetics

Core Faculty
Phone: (919) 843-6475 | Office: 5047 Genetic Medicine Building
Email: dschride@email.unc.edu | Website: https://www.schriderlab.org/

Research Areas: Bioinformatics, Comparative Genomics and Molecular Evolution, Computational Genomics, Statistical and Population Genetics
Research Interests: We develop and apply computational tools to make inferences about evolution from population genomic datasets. Our research areas include the population genetics of adaptation, genomic copy number variants, and the application of supervised machine learning tools to evolutionary questions.

Cavin Ward-Caviness, PhD

August 30, 2018

Cavin Ward-Caviness, PhD

Computational Biologist/Principal Investigator of US EPA

Core Faculty
Phone: (919) 966-5445 | Office: 104 Mason Farm Road
Email: ward-caviness.cavin@epa.gov | Website: https://www.wc-lab.com/

Research Areas: Computational Genomics, Statistical and Population Genetics
Research Interests: My primary research interest is in using large clinical databases to uncover environmental and social health risks. In addition I am interested in furthering the use of machine learning in environmental epidemiology and uncovering molecular biomarkers for environmental health risk and the molecular mechanisms by which environmental exposures are translated into health outcomes.