Session Chairs
Heather Wheeler, PhD
Loyola University Chicago
Heather E. Wheeler is an Assistant Professor at Loyola University Chicago with a joint appointment in the Departments of Biology and Computer Science. She teaches courses within the Bioinformatics Program and also has a secondary appointment in the Department of Public Health Sciences. The broad goal of her research is to better understand how genetic variation leads to phenotypic variation for complex traits including disease susceptibility and drug response. Her current focus is understanding the degree of transferability of genetic
association results and implicated genes across diverse populations with the goal of reducing the contribution of genomics to health disparities. Before joining Loyola, she was a postdoctoral fellow at The University of Chicago, where she worked in statistical genetics and cancer pharmacogenomics. Heather holds a PhD in Genetics from Stanford University and a BA in Biology from Hamline University.
Aritro Nath, PhD
University of Minnesota
Aritro Nath is a postdoctoral fellow in the R. Stephanie Huang lab at the University of Minnesota in the Department of Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology, and the Masonic Cancer Center. Aritro’s research broadly focuses on utilizing computational and experimental approaches to improve our understanding of the mechanisms therapeutic response to anticancer agents. His research revolves around establishing a role of the non-coding transcriptome in cancer pharmacogenomics, translating pre-clinical models to predict drug response in patients and studying the longitudinal effects of drug treatment on the genome and transcriptome of patients. He previously worked as a postdoc in the Huang lab at the University of Chicago, following a PhD in Genetics from Michigan State University.
Qiongshi Lu, PhD
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Qiongshi Lu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Lu's research focuses on developing statistical and computational methods to functionally annotate the human genome and dissectthe genetic architecture of complex human diseases. In particular, he is interested in leveraging functional annotation information in genetic association studies to improve functional gene
fine-mapping, genetic risk prediction, and genetic correlation estimation. Qiongshi holds a PhD in Biostatistics from Yale University and a BS in Mathematics from Tsinghua University.
