Author Archives: Jonathon Cornett

Dr. Xihao Li (Assistant Professor of Genetics & Biostatistics) and Yiyan Zhang (Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Graduate Student in the lab of Yun Li, UNC Genetics) are authors on a newly published manuscript titled “A scalable framework for identifying allelic series from summary statistics”.

UNC’s WinSPIRE organization was awarded the 2025 Burroughs Wellcome Fund Student STEM Enrichment Program grant.

On October 24, 2025, the Department of Genetics hosted a group of 10 students from Wake Tech Community College (WTCC) who are part of the Stem Academic and Research Training (START) program.

Multiple Bioinformatics and Computational Biology and Genetics and Molecular Biology Graduate Students were selected from overwhelming interest to participate in the UNC Chapel Hill Inaugural Graduate Research Symposium on Thursday, October 23.

Drs. Sabrina Toro (Assistant Professor) and Melissa Haendel (Distinguished Professor) are the corresponding and senior authors, respectively, on a newly published manuscript titled “Mondo: Integrating disease terminologies across communities”.

Dr. Ageliki Tsagaratou has been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure, effective September 26, 2025.

Dr. Samir Kelada (Associate Professor) was awarded a new R01 grant from NIEHS for his project titled “Discovery of gene-by-air pollution interactions in respiratory disease using genetically diverse mice with validation in humans”.

Dr. Karen Mohlke (Professor) received a new RC2 award from NIDDK, designed to fund ambitious, interdisciplinary, and high-risk/high-reward projects.

Dr. Jason Stein (Associate Professor, Genetics and Neuroscience) was awarded a new Other Transaction (OT2) from the NIH Office of the Director for his project titled “Modeling autism-associated gene-by-environment interactions in human brain organoids”.

Dr. Qingyun Liu (Assistant Professor) has been awarded a DP2 New Innovator Award from NIAID for his project titled “Population genomics-guided dissection of the bacterial genetic basis of tuberculosis transmissibility”.