Statistical and Population Genetics

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.

Corbin D. Jones, PhD

Professor of Biology and Genetics

Core Faculty
Phone: 919-962-4443 | Office: 3159 Genome Science Building
Email: cdjones@email.unc.edu | Website: http://bio.unc.edu/people/faculty/cdjones/

Research Areas: Bioinformatics, Comparative Genomics and Molecular Evolution, Statistical and Populational Genetics
Research Interests: Developing novel computational approaches for comparative analysis of genomics data

Yun Li, PhD

Professor of Genetics and Biostatistics

Core Faculty
Phone: 919-843-2832 | Office: 5043 Genetic Medicine Building
Email: yunli@med.unc.edu | Website: https://yunliweb.its.unc.edu

Research Areas: Bioinformatics, Statistical and Populational Genetics
Research Interests: The focus of my research is on the development of statistical methods and their application to the genetic dissection of complex diseases and traits.

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.

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.

Yufeng Liu, PhD

Professor of Statistics & Operations Research, Biostatistics, and Genetics

Resource Faculty
Phone: 919-962-4475 | Office: 4250 Genome Science Building
Email: yfliu@email.unc.edu | Website: http://www.unc.edu/~yfliu

Research Areas: Bioinformatics, Image Analysis, Statistical and Populational Genetics
Research Interests: Statistical Machine Learning and Data Mining; High-dimensional Data Analysis; Nonparametric Statistics and Functional Estimation; Bioinformatics; Cancer Genomics; Medical Imaging Data Analysis

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.

Michael Love, PhD

Associate Professor of Genetics and Biostatistics

Core Faculty
Phone: (919) 966-7266 | Office: 5009 GMB
Email: milove@email.unc.edu | Website: https://mikelove.github.io

Research Areas: Bioinformatics, Computational Genomics, Statistical and Populational Genetics
Research Interests: The Love lab develops statistical and computational methods for the analysis of high-dimensional genomic data for biomedical and biological research. The Love lab has developed a number of open source software packages for the analysis of genomic datasets in R/Bioconductor.

Karen Mohlke, PhD

Professor of Genetics

Resource Faculty
Phone: 919-966-2913 | Office: 5096 Genetic Medicine Bldg.
Email: mohlke@med.unc.edu | Website: http://mohlke.web.unc.edu/

Research Areas: Bioinformatics, Computational Genomics, Statistical and Population Genetics
Research Interests: Genetic basis of complex metabolic traits

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, 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

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.

William Valdar, PhD

Professor of Genetics

Core Faculty
Phone: 919-843-2833 | Office: 5044 Genetic Medicine Building
Email: william.valdar@unc.edu | Website: http://valdarlab.unc.edu

Research Areas: Computational Genomics, Statistical and Populational Genetics
Research Interests: Quantitative and statistical genetics: modeling the relationship between genes and complex disease in model organisms and humans.

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.

Hyejung Won, PhD

Assistant Professor of Department of Genetics

Core Faculty
Phone: (919) 966-4069 | Office: 7202B Mary Ellen Jones Building, 116 Manning Dr.
Email: hyejung_won@med.unc.edu | Website: http://www.wonlab.org/

Research Areas: Bioinformatics, Statistical and Population Genetics
Research Interests: We try to bridge the gap between genetic risk factors for psychiatric illnesses and neurobiological mechanisms by decoding the regulatory relationships in human brain. In particular, we implement Hi-C, a genome-wide chromosome conformation capture technique, to identify the folding principle of the genome in human brain. We then leverage this information to identify the functional impacts of the common variants associated with neuropsychiatric disorders.

Di Wu, PhD

Associate Professor of Periodontics, School of Dentistry; Biostatistics

Core Faculty
Phone: 919-537-3277 | Office: 4504 Koury Oral Health Sciences Building
Email: dwu@unc.edu | Website: http://sph.unc.edu/adv_profile/di-wu-phd/

Research Areas: Bioinformatics, Computational Genomics, Computational System Biology, Statistical and Population Genetics
Research Interests: Development of statistical methods for multidimensional genomic data integration to understand the biological mechanism of diseases.

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.

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.