Experience

University of Utah

• United States
• Higher Education
• 700 & Above Employee

• Genetic Epidemiologist & Assistant Professor

  • Mar 2010 - Present

  - Taught and mentored graduate level students in an ‘Intro to Genetic Epidemiology’ course for ten years- Developed the powerful skill set of taking complex ideas/concepts and making them understandable - Delivered lectures and articulated my research to broad audiences domestically and internationally - Wrote and published dozens of manuscripts and articles presenting my research in a digestible manner- Simplify complex data to articulate findings

• Data Scientist

  • Jan 2020 - Jul 2020

  (Discovery of a rare high-risk haplotype for melanoma in a large-scale public dataset)- Restructured a commonly used dataset to identify a different perspective resulting in the discovery of rare events - My unique approach to this data led to the discovery a novel signal for melanoma- Analyzed novel signals that replicated in external large-scale datasets and applied this method to other data sets - Currently attempting to replicate the signal in two other external large-scale datasets Show less

• Data Scientist

  • Jan 2019 - Dec 2019

  (Developed a genomic prediction model for prostate cancer that is focused on rare variation)- Built a predictive model that incorporated rare and common variants that outperformed the conventional model- Presented results to an international prostate cancer consortium- Expanded the prediction model using family history data from a large-scale population genealogy database

• Data Scientist

  • Jan 2018 - Dec 2018

  (Discovered a melanoma disease gene referred to as GOLM1)- Generated sequence data from DNA on families with a statistical excess of melanoma- Constructed an analysis pipeline to read raw data and convert it to analyzable data - Applied statistical analysis (using Excel, Perl, & R) to identify a new signal at GOLM1 gene- Collaborated with another researcher to validate this finding and develop reports and outcomes- Published this finding in a high-level journal. Presented finding to an international melanoma consortium Show less