People

Mohan's research background is in genetics and epidemiology, which he brings together to bridge the gap between ‘omic’ discovery and public health through the development, refinement, and innovative application of analytical methods of mapping metabolic risk genes. He aims to bring about lasting changes in health and wellness in underrepresented communities using three interconnected elements that he believes are critical in any research: whānau ora (healthy families), wai ora (healthy environments) and mauri ora (healthy individuals). 

Rachel is a biological anthropologist and geneticist with a Ph.D. from University of Pennsylvania. Her research has focused on a variety of topics including mitochondrial genetics, population history, and the genetics of obesity and related diseases. By drawing on evolutionary theory, oral history, and biocultural perspectives, Rachel's work seeks to understand how human history and cultural diversity impact genetic risks of disease in modern populations.

Yao is a Ph.D. student in the Molecular, Cellular, and Integrative Biosciences program at Penn State. She got her bachelor's degree in biotechnology at SUSTech, China. With a background in Biology, she is now studying the genomic and transcriptomic signatures of CVD diseases and severe obesity. 

Ellyzabeth is a Ph.D. student in the Biobehavioral Health program at Penn State. She received her B.A. in History and B.S. in Behavioral Neuroscience at St. Edward’s University, TX. She is a College Assistant Migrant Program Scholar, and her previous research as a McNair scholar focused on unhoused populations and migrant workers & reproductive health. Her current research  focuses on how neighborhood-level vulnerabilities and environmental toxicants influence obesity risk and how this exposure manifests in the individual across the lifespan.

Caroline is an undergraduate student at Penn State in the Schreyer Honors College majoring in Biobehavioral Health with minors in Biology and Spanish. Her research interests include the intersection of genetics and public health, with an emphasis on metabolic disease and health outcomes. She plans to complete an honors thesis using large-scale genetic approaches to determine disease risk in African American populations and is also pursuing a Spanish for Healthcare certificate reflecting her interest in improving access to and equity in health research and care across diverse populations. 

Amber is an undergraduate majoring in Biobehavioral Health and an IUG-MPH student at Penn State. Her research interests center on health disparities affecting Hispanic and Latino populations. She is currently working on a research project focused on Cardiovascular Kidney Metabolic Disease (CKMD), with emphasis on understanding disparities under current clinical guidelines and identifying underlying genetic and omic signatures.

Tony did an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry at the University of, Otago graduating in 1989. He then did a PhD in Biochemistry with Prof Iain Lamont as supervisor, studying the role of the PvdD gene in iron chelation by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. After graduating in 1993 he did postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford from 1994 to 1998 in the genetics of type 1 diabetes under the mentorship of Professor John Todd. On coming back to the University of Otago in 1998 he switched from studying the genetics of one autoimmune disease (type 1 diabetes) to another rheumatoid arthritis.

In the early 2000s, based on the research need in Aotearoa NZ he switched to the genetics of a very common form of arthritis, gout. In 2020 he transferred the gout program of research to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where the research focus is now on the innate immune system response to monosodium urate crystals, the cause of gout. Tony has ongoing collaborations and kaitiaki of sample repositories in NZ.

Lindsay Fernández-Rhodes is a trained epidemiologist with experience in the areas of Genetic, Epigenetic, and Social Epidemiology. Her interdisciplinary research seeks to 1) elucidate the complex etiology of chronic diseases, and 2) identify key drivers of health disparities in the United States, both across the life course and across generations.  To this aim, she conducts bio-psychosocially integrated studies of reproductive and cardiovascular traits in under-studied and marginalized populations, such as United States Hispanic/Latino immigrants and their families.  She has used a variety of traditional and family-based methods to describe the intergenerational patterning of genetic, epigenetic and psychosocial risk factors and their joint impact on health across the life course. 

Blake is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Nutrition Research Institute (NRI), where his lab applies multi-omics approaches to investigate the metabolic mechanisms underlying cancer and other chronic, age-related diseases. His research leverages analytical chemistry techniques such as liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry to study how nutrient metabolism can inform disease progression, therapy resistance mechanisms, and biomarker development.