Research
I studied stochastic processes and population genetics under Professors Steve Krone and Paul Joyce at the University of Idaho, where the highlight of my Ph.D. work was developing a small-world Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm to sample multimodal spaces.
For my postdoctoral training, I worked with Professor Matthew Stephens at the University of Chicago, focusing on Bayesian imputation-based association mapping and Bayesian variable selection regression.
I started my own lab at Baylor College of Medicine in 2010. My research accomplishments there included developing methods for local ancestry inference, uncovering evidence of strong selection at the Major Histocompatibility Complex in Mexicans since admixture, deriving p-values from Bayes factors, and mentoring three Ph.D. students who are now well-positioned in their careers.
In 2018, I joined Duke University, where my most impactful work involved inferring fetal fraction from read heterozygosity for noninvasive prenatal screening, which significantly improved the positive predictive value of the screening.
Unfortunately Duke denied my tenure after a long delay, leading me to join NHLBI in 2022.
I am currently a Staff Scientist working with Dr. Daniel Levy, focusing on analyzing the genotypes and phenotypes of three generations of participants in the Framingham Heart Study (FHS). Before joining NHLBI, my research primarily involved working with unrelated samples. The FHS, however, provides a unique opportunity to study closely related samples. Since joining NHLBI, I have been developing methods for analyzing these closely related samples and have come to appreciate the significant advantages that trios bring to genetic association studies.
Here are several reports on China Initiative and NIH-led investigations:
A report in which I am a second feature on fifth paragraph; A report on Franklin Tao by Gideon Lewis-Kraus; A Science article by Jeffray Mervis.
