Post Doctoral Fellows

Donghe Li, Ph.D.
Post-Doctoral Associate, Biomedical Genetics, BUSM
Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Program of Bioinformatics | Seoul National University – Seoul | S. Korea (Feb. 2020)
M.S. in Department of Statistics | Chung-Ang University – Seoul, S. Korea (Aug. 2014)
B.S. in Department of Statistics | Yanbian University, China (Aug. 2010)

Research Interests:
During the Ph.D. periods, I have had opportunities to be involved in several genetic research projects, which include different genetic research methods for different complex diseases. I have worked on gene-gene interaction analysis on Type 2 diabetes, performed segregation analysis to find the genetic model for breast cancer, constructed genomic data analysis pipelines which include imputation and variant calling, performed genome-wide association analysis, identified the progressive effect of SNPs on longitudinal lung function, and APOE stratification analysis with Alzheimer’s disease data.

My current research interests include quantifying genetic effects by applying statistical methods for longitudinal data analysis of Alzheimer’s disease and implementing family-based genetic methods to investigate Alzheimer’s disease.

Selected Publications:
1. Donghe Li, Sungho Won “Efficient strategy to Identify Gene-Gene Interactions and Its Application to Type 2 Diabetes”, Genomics Inform, 2016.
2. Donghe Li, Wonji Kim, Longfei Wang, Kyong-Ah Yoon, Boyoung Park, Charny Park, Sun-Young Kong, Yongdeuk Hwang, Daehyun Baek, Eun Sook Lee, and Sungho Won “Comparison of INDEL Calling Tools with Simulation Data and Real Short-Read Data”, Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (TCBB), 2018.
3. Donghe Li, Sanghun Lee, Sungho Won “Progressive effect of single-nucleotide polymorphisms on 16 Phenotypic Traits with Longitudinal Data” (Genes & Genomics), 2020.
4. Hwan Soo Kim, In Sook Sol, Donghe Li, Miyoung Choi, Yun Jung Choi, Kyung Suk Lee, Ju Hee Seo, Yong Ju Lee, Hyeon Jong Yang, Hyun Hee Kim, Hyeon Jong Yang “Efficacy of Glucocorticoids for the Treatment of Macrolide Refractory Mycoplasma Pneumonia in Children: Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials”, BMC Pulmonary Medicine, 2019.

Conferences:
1. Donghe Li, Sungho Won “Comparison of INDEL Calling Tools with Simulation Data and Real Short-Read Data”, The 44th Korean Public Health Conference, 2017, Seoul, South Korea. (Minister’s Award of Ministry of Health and Welfare for Poster Presentation)
2. Donghe Li, Sungho Won “Comparison of INDEL Calling Tools with Simulation Data and Real Short-Read Data”, The 28thInternational Conference on Genome Informatics, GIW/BIOINFO 2017, Seoul, South Korea.
3. Sujin Seo, Donghe Li, Sungho Won “Polygenic risk prediction models for Alzheimer’s disease”, The 21st Annual Meeting of the Korean Society for Brain and Neural Sciences 2018, Seoul, Korea. (Best Poster Presentation Award)
4. Donghe Li, Sungho Won “A Genome-Wide Association Study Implicates EPHA6 for Alzheimer Disease in Family-Based Analysis”, Alzheimer’s Association International Conference 2019, Los Angeles, USA.


Moonil Kang, Ph.D.
Post-Doctoral Associate, Biomedical Genetics, BUSM
Ph.D. Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea (Feb. 2020)
M.P.H. Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea (Feb. 2015)
B.S. Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea (Feb. 2012)
 

Research Interests:
I have been working as a postdoctoral associate in the Section of Biomedical Genetics at BUSM since Nov. 2020. Now, I am assigned to the following projects: 1) Genetic Studies of Alzheimer Disease in Koreans and 2) Precision Monitoring and Assessment in the Framingham Study: Cognitive, MRI, Genetic and Biomarker Precursors of AD & Dementia. My primary roles include performing statistical, genetic, and bioinformatic analyses, writing manuscripts, and preparing presentations for scientific meetings.

As a genetic epidemiologist, I am interested in the genetic background of human traits and complex diseases. I am fascinated by this field because it uses multidisciplinary approaches, changes rapidly, and has many unexplored areas. Most of all, it is the science directly affecting human beings. During my graduate research, I had focused on identifying genetic risk factors for CVD-related traits, including ECG, dyslipidemia, and hypertension. I have mainly got experience in GWASs using family-based cohorts, GxE interaction studies, and GWISs on these complex human traits.

During my postdoctoral research, I expect to deepen my understanding of genetic factors, environmental exposures, and their interactions affecting human traits and complex diseases, especially AD and AD-related traits. I recently started a SAG with ADGC to figure out pleiotropy in cognitive domains and brain MRI measures. I believe AD is one of the most critical and challenging research topics for the aging population. Moreover, I also plan to accumulate experience in various research approaches using WGS, WES, and multi-omics data to clarify my future research topics.

Selected Publications:
1. Hwang S*, Kang M*, Ham D, Kong M, Genetic Influence on Choroidal Volume. Am J Ophthalmol. 2021 Apr; 224: 143-149. (*Equal Contribution)
2. Kong M, Hwang S, Ko H, Lee G, Kang M, Sung J, Song Y, Ham D, Heritability of macular ganglion cell inner plexiform layer thickness as determined by optical coherence tomography: the Healthy Twin Study. Br J Ophthalmol. 2020 Aug; 11: bjophthalmol-2020-316512.
3. Jin T, Youn J, Kim A, Kang M, Kim K, Sung J, Lee J, Interactions of Habitual Coffee Consumption by Genetic Polymorphisms with the Risk of Prediabetes and Type 2 Diabetes Combined. Nutrients. 2020 Jul; 12(8): 2228.
4. Kim A, Cho H, Youn J, Jin T, Kang M, Sung J, Lee J, Coffee Consumption, Genetic Polymorphisms, and the Risk of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: A Pooled Analysis of Four Prospective Cohort Studies. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Jul; 17(15): 5379.
5. Kang M, Sung J. A genome-wide search for gene-by-obesity interaction loci of dyslipidemia in Koreans shows diverse genetic risk alleles. J Lipid Res. 2019 Dec; 60(12): 2090-2101.
6. Suh Y, Shin J, Kang M, Park H, Lee K, Song Y, Sung J. Genetic and Environmental Influences on General Skin Traits: Healthy Twins and Families in Korea. Twin Res Hum Genet. 2017 Feb; 20(1): 36-42.



Hamid Mostafavi Abdolmaleky
Post Doctoral Fellow |Biomedical Genetics, Boston University
Post-Doctoral Fellow |Harvard University, Psychiatry, Epidemiology, Genetics, Epigenetics (2001-2007)
Iran National University, Iran University of Medical Sciences, General Medicine, Psychiatry (1975-1985)
 

Research Interests:
I have been working as a faculty member in the department of psychiatry at Iran University of Medical Sciences for 15 years. During this time I was involved in the teaching of residents and medical students in a clinical setting and teaching of Medical Doctors and Psychiatrist in Continuing Medical Education Courses in the area of Clinical Psychiatry, Psychiatric Epidemiology, Diagnostic Classification, Psychiatric Genetics and Epigenetics, Psychopharmacology, Alcohol and Drug Abuse, Neuropsychiatry and Neurodevelopment, Co-morbidity in Psychiatric Disorders and PTSD.

My experience as a clinical psychiatrist and research in the field of neuroscience led me to realize that little is known about the etiology of major mental disorders. I recognized that the only way to improve the treatment strategies for these devastating diseases is to use novel insights from basic bench research. Thus, I decided to look for opportunities to conduct cutting edge research in psychiatry. This search resulted in my enrollment in a post-doctoral Psychiatric Genetics Training Program at the Harvard Institute of Psychiatric Epidemiology and Genetics beginning November, 2001. Under the guidance of Dr. Ming Tsuang, an outstanding clinician scientist in Psychiatry at the Harvard University and Dr. Sam Thiagaligam, an expert molecular geneticist at the Boston University, I was working on the mechanisms of genes-environment interactions in brain development and the role of environment insults in the pathogenesis of mental diseases.

This unique collaboration enabled me to combine the expertise of these mentors to take a novel approach to dissect the molecular basis of the psychiatric symptoms that are influenced by the environmental effects based on alterations in genes promoter DNA methylation. Since January 2003, I have been involved in laboratory experiments on the epigenetic modulation of several gene promoter regions using more than 120 post-mortem human brains affected with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. During the last six years, was able to pursue research in psychiatric epigenetics, written three review articles on “methylomics in psychiatry”, and published three articles on my original research findings. As a psychiatrist with skills in basic science research, my ultimate goal is to find novel strategies to treat the affected patients based on their genetic and epigenetic make up and potentially develop new therapeutic modalities for these diseases.

Selected Publications:
1. Abdolmaleky HM, Faraone SV, Glatt SJ and Tsuang MT. Meta-analysis of Association Between the T102C Polymorphism of the 5HT2a Receptor Gene and Schizophrenia. Schizo Res, 2004:1;67(1):53-62.
2. Abdolmaleky HM, Smith CL, Faraone SV, Shafa R, Stone WS, Glatt SJ, Tsuang MT. Methylomics in psychiatry: Modulation of gene-environment interactions may be through DNA methylation. Am J Med Genet.2004:15;127B(1):51-9
3. Abdolmaleky HM, Cheng KH, Russo A, Smith CL, Faraone SV, Wilcox M, Shafa R, Glatt SJ, Nguyen G, Ponte JF, Thiagalingam S, Tsuang MT. Hypermethylation of the Reelin (RELN) Promoter in the Brain of Schizophrenic Patients: A Preliminary Report. Am J Med Genet B Neuropsychiatr Genet. 2005;
5:134(1):60-6.
4. Abdolmaleky HM, Thiagalingam S, Wilcox M. Genetics and Epigenetics in Major Mental Disorders: Dilemmas, Achievements, Applications and Future Scope. Am J Pharmacogenomics. 2005;5(3):149-60.
5. Abdolmaleky HM, Cheng KH, Faraone SV, Wilcox M, Glatt SJ, Gao F, Smith CL, Shafa R, Aleali B, Carnevale J, Pan H, Papageorgis P, Ponte JF, Sivaraman V, Tsuang MT, Thiagalingam S. Hypomethylation of MB-COMT Promoter is a Major Risk Factor for Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder, Hum Mol Genet. 2006
6. Abdolmaleky HM, Zhou, RJ., Thiagalingam S and Smith CL. Epigenetic and Pharmacoepigenomic Studies of Major Psychoses and Potentials for Therapeutics, Pharmacogenomics. 2008 Dec;9(12):1809-23.

Book Chapters:
· Abdolmaleky HM, Smith CL, Zhou, RJ., Thiagalingam S. “Epigenetic Alterations of Dopaminergic System in Major Psychiatric Disorders” in “Pharmacogenomics in Drug Discovery and Development”. Editor: Yan Q, Humana Press, 2008
· Abdolmaleky HM, Smith CL, Zhou, RJ. Thiagalingam S “Epigenetic modulation of reelin function in schizophrenia and bipolar disorders” in “Reelin Glycoprotein, biology, structure and roles in health and disease” Editor: Fatemi SH, Springer, 2008


Habbiburr Rehman
Post-Doctoral Associate, Biomedical Genetics, BUSM
Ph.D. (2022) in Statistics | Pondicherry University, Puducherry, India.
M.Sc. (2016) in Statistics | Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India.
B.Sc. (2014) in Statistics | Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India.

Research Interests:
During the Ph.D., my research interests lie in understanding the survival models and their applications in medical, biological, and clinical trials. Especially, I am interested to study the effect of the competing risks on the survival of study subjects. In this research work, I introduced some parametric models under right and middle censoring mechanisms. I carried out the estimation via frequentist and Bayesian methods. Currently, I am working as a postdoctoral associate in the Section of Biomedical Genetics at BUSM since July 2022. Now, I am assigned to work on the project which is focusing on peripheral inflammation for the risk of Alzheimer’s disease in the Framingham Heart Study. In this project, my primary goal is to investigate the genetic effects by applying statistical methods for longitudinal data analysis of Alzheimer’s disease.

Publications:
1. Rehman, H. and Chandra, N. (2022). Inferences on cumulative incidence function for middle censored survival data with Weibull regression. Japanese Journal of Statistics and Data Science, Springer.
2. Rehman, H. and Chandra, N. (2021). Parametric regression approach for Gompertz survival times with competing risks. Communications on Applied Mathematics and Computation, Springer
3. Rehman, H., & Chandra, N. (2021). Estimation of Cumulative Incidence Function in the Presence of Middle Censoring Using Improper Gompertz Distribution. Statistica, University of Bologna, 81(2), 163–182.
4. Rehman, H., Chandra, N. and Jammalamadaka, S.R. (2021). Competing Risks Survival Data Under Middle Censoring – an Application to COVID-19 Pandemic. Healthcare Analytics, Elsevier.
5. Rehman, H., Chandra, N., Hosseini-Baharanchi, F. S., Baghestani, A. R., & Pourhoseingholi, M. A. (2021). Cause-specific hazard regression estimation for modified Weibull distribution under a class of non-informative priors. Journal of Applied Statistics, 1-18, Taylor & Francis.
6. Chandra, N., & Rehman, H. (2021). On the Estimation of Parametric Cause-Specific Hazard Function with Bayesian Approach under Informative Priors. Montes Taurus J. Pure Appl. Math. 3 (3), 25–38, MTJPAM Turkey.
7. Rehman, H., Chandra, N., Hosseini-Baharanchi, F. S., & Baghestani, A. R. (2020). Competing Hazards Regression Parameter Estimation Under Different Informative Priors. Journal of Reliability and Statistical Studies, 13 (2), 325-348, River Publishers.

Book Chapter:
· Chandra, N. and Rehman, H. (2021). Applications of Lifetime Modeling with Competing Risks in Biomedical Sciences. Deep Learning in Biomedical and Health Informatics, CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, www.crcpress.com. (Copyright Year 2022, 1st Edition).


Mintao Lin
Post-Doctoral Associate, Biomedical Genetics, BUSM
Bachelor and Master of Clinical Medicine (M.D.), Neurology | West China School of Medicine, Sichuan University Jun 2013 – Jun 2021
Master of Bioinformatics |  Boston University Sept 2021 – Jan 2023

Research Interests:
I mainly focus on the analysis and processing of circular RNA. At the same time, I am very interested in the design of bioinformatics/medical analysis pipelines. In addition, I have also participated in the rare-eqtl project.

Publications:
1. Individual prediction of motor vehicle accidents for patients with epilepsy;Epilepsy & Behavior. 2021. PMID: 34111767;
2. Risk factors for suicidal tendency in people with epilepsy in China: a case–control study; Scientific Reports. 2021. PMID: 33531579;
3. Identification of circRNAs linked to Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias; Alzheimer’s & Dementia 2022. DOI:10.1002/alz.12960; co-author
4. Brain functional connectivity patterns in focal cortical dysplasia related epilepsy; Seizure.2020. PMID: 33636448; co-author
5. New onset neurologic events in people with COVID-19 infection in three regions in China; Neurology. 2020 Sep; PMID: 32554771; co-author


Alexander Knyshov
Post-Doctoral Associate, Biomedical Genetics, BUSM
Ph.D., University of California Riverside, 2018
M.S., St. Petersburg State University, Russia, 2012
B.S., St. Petersburg State University, Russia, 2010

 

Research Interests:
I am currently a researcher on the National Alzheimer Disease Sequencing Project (ADSP) and ADSP-Functional Genomics Consortium project to unravel cell-specific mechanisms of AD progression and contributing to large-scale efforts to decipher the genetic component of Alzheimer disease. I am specifically focused on developing and executing novel computational pipelines for analysis of in-house and publicly available high-throughput next generation sequencing data. My prior research experience in evolutionary genomics and bioinformatics and work on multiple study organisms align well with the expertise required to design and troubleshoot sophisticated software for analysis of NGS data.

Publications:
1. Knyshov, A., Gordon, E.R.L., Masonick, P.K., Castillo, S., Forero, D., Hoey-Chamberlain, R., Hwang, W.S., Johnson, K.P., Lemmon, A.R., Moriarty Lemmon, E., Standring, S., Zhang, J., & Weirauch, C. (2023) Chromosome-Aware Phylogenomics of Assassin Bugs (Hemiptera: Reduvioidea) Elucidates Ancient Gene Conflict, Molecular Biology and Evolution 40 (8): msad168.
2. Knyshov, A., Gordon, E.R.L., & Weirauch, C. (2021) New alignment-based sequence extraction software (ALiBaSeq) and its utility for deep level phylogenetics. PeerJ 9:e11019.
3. Knyshov, A., Gordon, E. R. L., & Weirauch, C. (2019) Cost-efficient high throughput capture of museum arthropod specimen DNA using PCR-generated baits. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 10 (6): 841-852.