Jia Li, PhD

Biographical Statement
I specialized in statistical genetics and bioinformatics. My interest is to develop rigorous statistical and computational methodologies to help understand disease mechanisms and improve disease diagnosis and treatment. I work closely with biologists and clinicians answer important clinical questions. My recent work included methodologies to identify gene-by-environmental interactions on risk of sarcoidosis of African Americans.

For chronic hepatitis B and C patients, I focus on effect of anti-viral therapy on extra-hepatic outcomes. I also work with cardiologists to identify pharmacogenomic biomarkers to predict treatment response for heart failure patients. I collaborate with immunologists study the epigenetic regulation in immune system and cancer development, and epigenetic biomarkers in precision medicine of autoimmune diseases. For cancer, I was involved in algorithm development to identify significant gene mutations and copy number changes across tens of thousands of retrospective deidentified patient tumor genomes.

Research Interests:

• Statistical genetics and bioinformatics
• Cancer
• Immune cell
• Autoimmune epigenetics
• Rigorous statistical methods to improve disease diagnosis and treatment 
• Precision medicine