Berg Lab
Principal Investigator: Jeremy Jackson Berg
Institution: University of Chicago (Chicago, IL)
Primary Subfield: Genetics/Genomics
Recruitment Status: Inquire for rotation/fellowship opportunities
Research Focus
Project Summary Many phenotypes, as well as the risk of developing many diseases, are genetically complex, and involve contributions from both genetic and non-genetic factors. Work in human genetics over the past two decades have shown that this variation is the result of contributions from a very large number of sites, on the order of thousands or tens of thousands. This presents challenges for both the measurement and interpretation of genetic association studies, as real genetic effects can be difficult to distinguish from the effects of confounding biases. On the other hand, biobank scale resources represent a tremendous opportunity to learn about both the biology of complex traits, and the evolutionary forces that have shaped modern patterns of variation. My group will develop statistical methods to overcome several current challenges in the study of genetically complex traits by apply tools from population, quantitative and statistical genetics. First, we will develop tools to diagnose and correct for ancestry stratification biases in polygenic scores. Even subtle stratification biases compound across loci to cause problems with polygenic predictions, so methods of carefully…
Active NIH Awards
- 5R35GM151257-04: Population genetic modeling of genetic variation for complex traits and diseases (2026)
- 5R35GM151257-03: Population genetic modeling of genetic variation for complex traits and diseases (2025)
- 5R35GM151257-02: Population genetic modeling of genetic variation for complex traits and diseases (2024)
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