About Me

Welcome to my site! I am a Human Genetics PhD student at the University of Pittsburgh’s Dept. of Human Genetics in the School of Public Health. I currently work as a member of Dr. HJ Park’s lab, in which I am focusing on using machine learning and causal inference methods to better understand complex genetic diseases. Specifically, I am developing statistical methods for large-scale databases to better elucidate risk factors for complex disease. A few of the papers in the last year that I’m excited about include: Epstein-Barr Virus Seropositivity, Immune Dysregulation, and Mortality in Pediatric Sepsis published in JAMA Network Open, DeepDiff-SHAP: Interpretable deep learning for subgroup-specific causal inference using conditional SHAP hosted on the bioRxiv preprint server, and DeepEXPOKE: A Deep Learning Framework with Polygenic Risk Scores as Knockoffs for Deconvoluting Genetic and Non-Genetic Exposure Risks in Sepsis and Coronary Heart Disease, currently in the revision stage at Genome Medicine and hosted on the medRxiv preprint server.

I received my M.S. in Genetic Epidemiology from the University of Washington, Seattle in June 2022. As part of my Master’s thesis working with Dr. Kathleen Kerr, I investigated genetic factors associated with SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility in multiethnic populations.

In the summer of 2021, I worked as a visiting research intern at UCSF with Dr. Lauren Weiss’s group and Dr. Helen Kim’s group on two unique complex genetic disease research projects. With Dr. Weiss, I investigated the hypothesis that maternal asthma can be a predictor of autism in children; I worked on developing polygenic risk scores and using risk scores as a metric for disease prediction and prevention. With Dr. Kim, I investigated the genetic basis of cerebral cavernous malformations (CCMs). Our research group ended up publishing the following manuscript in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology: Mild Hypoxia Accelerates Cerebral Cavernous Malformation Disease Through CX3CR1-CX3CL1 Signaling. You can find more information about the scope of these projects and my prior undergraduate research experience in my CV.

I received my B.S. in Genetics and Genomics from the University of California, Davis along with a minor in Statistics in June 2020. I credit a lot of my scientific curiosity and appreciation for research to my time working in Dr. Megan Dennis’s lab and the wonderful mentors (Dr. Alexandra Colón-Rodriguez, Dr. Megan Dennis) I had. From 2018-2020, I studied autism spectrum disorder in zebrafish and contributed to the following manuscript in Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology: Assessment of Autism Zebrafish Mutant Models Using a High-Throughput Larval Phenotyping Platform.

Away from the lab, my hobbies include analysis and written work about the NBA, playing the piano and drums, basketball, tennis, nature photography, and all things coffee.

If you have any questions about my research or career path, feel free to send me an email at: ads303@pitt.edu.

Thanks for stopping by!