William Evan Johnson, PhD
Adjunct Associate Professor, Medicine
Biography
Evan Johnson specializes in computational biology and biostatistics, developing new tools to investigate disease prognoses and causes and to help determine effective regimens based on individual patients’ risk factors. He has published in the journals Cell, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Biometrics, Nature Reviews Genetics, Annals of Applied Statistics, and Biostatistics. His work has been funded by the NIH.
The focus of his group’s research is to develop computational and statistical tools to investigate core components that contribute to disease prognosis and etiology, and for the accurate determination of optimal diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic regimens for individual patients. They are actively developing methods and software tools for data preprocessing, integration, and downstream analysis, and applying these tools in a variety of clinical and biomedical applications. Their work includes a balance between statistical methods development, algorithm optimization, and clinical application. Statistical innovation focuses on the development of clinically motivated tools that integrate linear modeling, Bayesian methods, factor analysis and structural equations models, Hidden Markov models, mixture models, dynamic programming, and high-performance parallel computing. This work has resulted in widely used tools and algorithms for profiling transcription factors (MAT, MA2C), preprocessing and integrating of genomic data (ComBat, BatchQC, SCAN-UPC), aligning sequencing reads (GNUMAP), developing multi-gene biomarker signatures (ASSIGN), and metagenomic profiling (PathoScope). They have successfully applied their tools in several biomedical and clinical scenarios, ranging from mechanistic studies and to precision genomics.
Other Positions
- Adjunct Associate Professor, Biostatistics, Boston University School of Public Health
- Member, BU-BMC Cancer Center, Boston University
- Member, Evans Center for Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research, Boston University
- Full Member, Boston Nutrition Obesity Research Center, Boston University Medical Center
- Member, Bioinformatics Graduate Program, Boston University
- Member, Genome Science Institute, Boston University
- Graduate Faculty (Primary Mentor of Grad Students), Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, Graduate Medical Sciences
- Founding Associate Professor, Computing & Data Sciences Administration, Boston University
Education
- Harvard University, PhD
- Harvard University, PhD
- Harvard University, MA
- Brigham Young University, MS
- Southern Utah University, BS
Publications
- Published on 11/10/2024
Sanchez GM, Hirsch ES, VanValkenburg A, Mayer DP, Gbedande K, Francis RL, Song W, Antao OQ, Brimmer KE, Lemenze A, Stephens R, Johnson WE, Weinstein JS. Aberrant zonal recycling of germinal center B cells impairs appropriate selection in lupus. Cell Rep. 2024 Nov 26; 43(11):114978. PMID: 39527476.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 8/30/2024
Odom AR, Gill CJ, Pieciak R, Ismail A, Thea D, MacLeod WB, Johnson WE, Lapidot R. Characterization of longitudinal nasopharyngeal microbiome patterns in maternally HIV-exposed Zambian infants. Gates Open Res. 2022; 6:143. PMID: 39345284.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 6/22/2024
Quiles KR, Shao FZ, Johnson WE, Chen F. EPITHELIAL REMODELING AND MICROBIAL DYSBIOSIS IN THE LOWER RESPIRATORY TRACT OF VITAMIN A-DEFICIENT MOUSE LUNGS. bioRxiv. 2024 Jun 22. PMID: 38948802.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 6/20/2024
Wang X, VanValkenberg A, Odom AR, Ellner JJ, Hochberg NS, Salgame P, Patil P, Johnson WE. Comparison of gene set scoring methods for reproducible evaluation of tuberculosis gene signatures. BMC Infect Dis. 2024 Jun 20; 24(1):610. PMID: 38902649.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 5/31/2024
Gao X, Johnson WE, Yourick MR, Campasino K, Sprando RL, Yourick JJ. Hepatotoxicity of silver nanoparticles: Benchmark concentration modeling of an in vitro transcriptomics study in human iPSC-derived hepatocytes. Regul Toxicol Pharmacol. 2024 Aug; 151:105653. PMID: 38825064.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 4/17/2024
Goldberg LR, Baskin BM, Adla Y, Beierle JA, Kelliher JC, Yao EJ, Kirkpatrick SL, Reed ER, Jenkins DF, Luong AM, Luttik KP, Scotellaro JA, Drescher TA, Crotts SB, Yazdani N, Ferris MT, Johnson WE, Mulligan MK, Bryant CD. Atp1a2 and Kcnj9 are candidate genes underlying oxycodone behavioral sensitivity and withdrawal in C57BL/6 substrains. bioRxiv. 2024 Apr 17. PMID: 38798314.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 3/20/2024
Lapidot R, Faits T, Ismail A, Allam M, Khumalo Z, MacLeod W, Kwenda G, Mupila Z, Nakazwe R, Segrè D, Johnson WE, Thea DM, Mwananyanda L, Gill CJ. Nasopharyngeal Dysbiosis Precedes the Development of Lower Respiratory Tract Infections in Young Infants, a Longitudinal Infant Cohort Study. Gates Open Res. 2022; 6:48. PMID: 39050991.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 3/10/2024
Yabaji SM, Zhernovkov V, Araveti PB, Lata S, Rukhlenko OS, Abdullatif SA, Alekseev Y, Ma Q, Dayama G, Lau NC, Bishai WR, Crossland NA, Campbell JD, Kholodenko BN, Gimelbrant AA, Kobzik L, Kramnik I. Myc Dysregulation in Activated Macrophages Initiates Iron-Mediated Lipid Peroxidation that Fuels Type I Interferon and Compromises TB Resistance. bioRxiv. 2024 Mar 10. PMID: 38496444.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 12/21/2023
Barnard ME, Wang X, Petrick JL, Zirpoli GR, Jones D, Johnson WE, Palmer JR. Psychosocial stressors and breast cancer gene expression in the Black Women's Health Study. Breast Cancer Res Treat. 2024 Apr; 204(2):327-340. PMID: 38127176.
Read at: PubMed - Published on 9/28/2023
Odom AR, McClintock J, Gill CJ, Pieciak R, Ismail A, MacLeod WB, Johnson WE, Lapidot R. Analysis of nasopharyngeal microbiome patterns in Zambian infants with fatal acute febrile illness. bioRxiv. 2023 Sep 28. PMID: 37808661.
Read at: PubMed
View 114 more publications: View full profile at BUMC