About Me
I am a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Lachance Lab at Georgia Institute of Technology, advised by Dr. Joseph Lachance. My research interests broadly encompass population genetics of complex traits in diverse populations and cancer evolution. I use population genetic theory in developing a contextualized framework to interpret the effects of genetic variation on prostate cancer risk with a special focus on African populations. I am interested in studying cancer progression through tissue-level somatic evolution. Key projects include:
- Genetics of prostate cancer in diverse populations
- Men of African genetic ancestry have elevated risks for prostate cancer incidence. We study the genetic architecture of prostate cancer across diverse populations within Africa.
- Population genetics of complex traits in sub-Saharan Africa
- African genomes have a higher diversity than the rest of the global populations. We examined the evolutionary causes of continental differences in the genetic architecture of complex traits.
- Ecology and evolution of tumor progression
- Oncogenesis is accompanied by various markers of ecological and evolutionary processes that can be leveraged to gain insights into predictive oncology.