I am a human geneticist and neuroscientist with >10 years of experience applying computational and statistical approaches in large multidimensional studies to generate insights into the etiology and mechanisms of brain-related disorders. I am also a passionate advocate of diversity in medical research, and I am involved in several projects to increase the representation of diverse populations in genetic studies. Currently, I am an NHMRC-ARC Research Fellow at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane, Australia, and an Atlantic Lifelong Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI), University of California, San Francisco. My research interests encompass the identification of genetic and neuroimaging biomarkers for complex psychiatric and neurological disorders. I am interested in multiple conditions including depression, chronic pain, sleep apnea, self-harm behavior, and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, and Lewy body dementia. I am co-chair the ENIGMA Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors (STB) working group, a worldwide research initiative pooling neuroimaging, clinical, psychosocial, and cognitive data from >20,000 people with and without STBs collected at >60 research institutions worldwide, and I am a member of the International Suicide Genetics Consortium (ISGC). I am the PI of the Australian Genetics of Parkinson’s disease study, part of the Global Parkinson’s Genetics Program, and co-established MEX-PD, a multicenter cohort study of Parkinson’s disease patients in Mexico, within the Latin American Research Consortium on the Genetics of Parkinson’s disease (LARGE-PD).
