Join us for the next instalment of the STAGE International Speaker Seminar Series (ISSS) with
Cristen Willer
Associate Professor of Internal Medicine, Human Genetics, Computational Medicine, and Bioinformatics
University of Michigan
Talk Title:
Insights into Human Health and Cardiometabolic Disease Using Large-Scale Genomics
Speaker Profile:
Dr. Willer is an Associate Professor in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Michigan, with joint appointments in the Department of Human Genetics, and the Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics, and is a member of the Center for Statistical Genetics. Dr. Willer is a Canadian who studied for a bachelor’s degree at McMaster, followed by a doctorate at Oxford University in England. She completed postdoctoral training in the laboratory of biostatistician Michael Boehnke at the University of Michigan. Dr. Willer joined the faculty at the University of Michigan in 2011.
Dr. Willer’s research group focuses on understanding the basis of cardiometabolic diseases by studying the genetic changes responsible for human disease. She has led consortia and collaborative groups to identify many new genetic regions associated with blood lipid levels, obesity and myocardial infarction, using whole-genome association studies and functional experiments. Dr. Willer uses and develops a variety of genomic technologies and statistical and bioinformatics approaches to identify rare genetic variants with large effects on blood lipid levels or risk of myocardial infarction. Dr. Willer is a co-Principal Investigator of the Global Lipids Genetics Consortium, a global partnership of hundreds of participating studies totaling over 500,000 study subjects. Dr. Willer is a co-PI of the HUNT-MI study, a large population based study of Norwegians investigating many diseases identified using electronic health records. She is also the Principal Investigator of the Cardiovascular Health Improvement Project (CHIP) which collects clinical, family history information and biospecimens from patients seen at the Frankel CVC at the University of Michigan to enable a wide variety of research projects.
Dr. Willer has 5 children and volunteers her time coaching Science Olympiad and mentoring other scientists interesting in managing both career and family.
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