Melinda C. Aldrich, MPH, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Division of Genetic Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Dr. Aldrich conducts cutting-edge research to inform the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of lung cancer for all populations. Her work encompasses two primary areas of focus: 1) understanding genetic and non-genetic determinants of health contributing to lung cancer risk and outcomes in underrepresented populations, and 2) addressing inequities in lung cancer screening. As a leader in lung cancer screening research, her work has played a pivotal role in shaping key health policy guidelines for lung cancer screening issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF). She received the Vanderbilt Chancellor’s Award for Research on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion and the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center Star Award for her high impact research contributions. In addition to her role as a Community-Academic Advisory Board member with the Vanderbilt Program for Health Equity Research, she serves as a Diversity Liaison for the Division of Genetic Medicine (Department of Medicine).
Alexander Bick, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and a physician-scientist working in the field of human genomics. His scientific observations have advanced our understanding of the genetic basis for cardiovascular disease, characterized molecular disease mechanisms and identified both the promise and limitations of translating genomic findings into routine medical practice. He has a particular interest in understanding how the interplay between inherited germline genetic factors and acquired somatic mutations contributes to disease. His approach has been highly collaborative and multidisciplinary – combining human genomics and statistical genetics with in-vitro and in-vivo characterization of model systems and human samples.
Qiuyin Cai, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Medicine and Director of the Molecular Epidemiology Laboratory. His research over the past 30 years has focused on investigating the contributions of host susceptibility and lifestyle factors to the etiology and disparities of cancer and other chronic diseases. He has been consistently funded by the NIH and DOD since 2002. Currently, he is the PI/MPI for three large molecular/genetic epidemiology studies (R01CA249863, R01MD015396, and U01CA262678) to identify genetic factors and biomarkers for cancer risks and disparities. He also serves as site PI for several NIH-funded projects and is a key co-investigator for many other NIH-funded research grants. He has published more than 500 papers.
Qi Dai, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine, has over 30 years of experience in conducting large-scale molecular and nutritional epidemiologic studies of cancer and randomized trials, including NCI-funded intervention trials for the prevention of cancer. Dr. Dai’s research focus is to 1) investigate the role of nutrients (e.g. magnesium and its regulation of vitamin D and calcium and medium chain fatty acids), polyphenols, phytoestrogens and environmental contaminations and their interactions in the etiology of cancer and other chronic diseases; 2) identify molecular biomarkers, pathways, signatures and mechanisms involved in the etiology of cancer relevant to nutrients, phytoestrogens and environmental contaminations using multi-omics approaches (methylomics, metabolomics, microbiome, genomics); and 3) to subsequently develop precision-based prevention strategies.
Todd Edwards, PhD, Dr. Todd L. Edwards is a genetic epidemiologist conducting research on the genetic determinants of complex human traits. He has a focus on traits with racial disparities, and traits with clinical and public health significance. He has recently studied congenital heart defects, hypertension and blood pressure, diabetes and diabetic complications, and women's health outcomes such as uterine fibroids. He works extensively with electronic health records data to develop cohorts for genetic association studies. He is a course director for the Genetic Epidemiology Foundations course on Coursera and is the Director of the CTSA TL1 training program at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He is an Associate Professor (with tenure) in the Division of Epidemiology, Department of Medicine.
Debra Friedman, MD, MS, Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine, E. Bronson Ingram Chair in Pediatric Oncology, Director, Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology and Deputy Director at the VICC, is a physician scientist whose research focuses on cancer care delivery, control, survivorship and health outcomes across the lifespan. As a pediatric oncologist, she focuses on cancer survivorship, hematologic malignancies and retinoblastoma, where she has led and contributed to clinical trials.
Xingyi Guo, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Epidemiology, Department of Medicine, and a secondary faculty member of the Department of Biomedical Information. He is the primary bioinformatician for multiple genetic epidemiologic studies and has led or played a critical role in multiple genetic epidemiologic and large genomics studies at the Vanderbilt Epidemiology Center. Dr. Guo has solid training and extensive experience in multiple disciplines including bioinformatics & biostatistics, genetic epidemiology and functional genomics, solid knowledge of computational biology and extensive experience in performing integrative analyses for genetic and genomic data. He has a broad interest in the research of cancer etiology, prevention, precision medicine and drug repurposing through developing bioinformatics, statistical and machine learning approaches and integrating multi-omics (i.e., single cell data) and Electronic Health Records (EHR). Currently, he has been the PI for a transcriptome-wide association study (TWAS) in colorectal cancer (CRC), funded by NIH (R37CA227130) and contact PI for proteome-wide association studies (PWAS) (R01CA269589), aiming to identify susceptibility genes and proteins for CRC. He has authored or co-authored more than 130 peer-reviewed publications, including high impact publications as lead author in Cancer Discovery, Gastroenterology, Cancer Research, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Nature communications, American Journal of Human Genetics and JAMA Network Open.
Douglas Heimburger, MD, MS, Dr. Heimburger is Professor of Medicine in the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health (VIGH) and the Division of Epidemiology. As VIGH’s Associate Director for Education and Training from 2009 to 2019, he directed VIGH’s education and training programs for Vanderbilt students and trainees as well as research training opportunities for doctoral and postdoctoral trainees from low- and middle-income countries. These included co-creation and co-direction of the Global Health Track in Vanderbilt’s Master of Public Health Program and the Vanderbilt Training Program in Molecular and Genetic Epidemiology of Cancer (MAGEC). He still co-directs the UNZA-Vanderbilt Partnership for HIV-NCD Research, the Vanderbilt-Zambia Cancer Research Training Program, and he formerly co-directed the Vanderbilt-Emory-Cornell-Duke Consortium for Global Health Fellows (VECDor) and the Training Program in Molecular and Genetic Epidemiology of Cancer (MAGEC). His principal research interests are nutritional influences on HIV treatment outcomes, including non-communicable conditions, in African adults, and global health education and training.
Andreana N. Holowatyj, PhD, MSCI, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Cancer Biology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC), as well as a Research Director and Co-Director of the Research Immersion Course at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Dr. Holowatyj's laboratory team focuses on improving clinical care and outcomes for patients diagnosed with gastrointestinal cancers. Her translational oncology research program spans from etiology to disparities and survivorship, using a unique cells-to-society approach with both patient studies and laboratory-based projects. Dr. Holowatyj has also served on the Expert Panel for the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) Staging Manual: Ninth Edition on Cancers of the Appendix. She was named the Inaugural Chair for the Scientific Advisory Board for the Appendix Cancer Pseudomyxoma Peritonei (ACPMP) Research Foundation, and serves on the FightCRC Early-Age Onset Colorectal Cancer Workgroup as well as the Board of Directors for VICC's Young Adults with Cancer Program. Dr. Holowatyj established and is the Principal Investigator (PI) of the Preserving Fertility After Colorectal Cancer (PREFACE) Study, a clinical study that focuses on the essential need to treat the whole patient for whom multiple life domains are impacted after a colorectal cancer diagnosis before the age of 50. She also created and is PI of the Genetics of Appendix Cancer (GAP) Study which aims to discover how changes in our genes may contribute to appendix cancer development.
Bingshan Li, PhD, Professor of human and statistical genetics, has a research focus in developing statistical and machine-learning methods to study the genetic mechanisms of human diseases, including psychiatric disorders, Alzheimer’s disease, and cancer, by integrating multi-scale genomic data.
Loren Lipworth, ScD, is a Research Professor of Medicine and Associate Director of the Division of Epidemiology. Her research utilizes both large-scale population-based cohorts and electronic health record databases. Her research is focused on behavioral and environmental risk factors for cancer, in particular renal cell, breast, and endometrial cancer, and cardiometabolic and renal diseases, with a focus on health disparities. She has been a Co-Investigator since its inception of the Southern Community Cohort Study (SCCS), a large prospective cohort study of over 86,000 primarily low income Black and White participants from the southeastern United States, whose extensive data and biospecimen repository provide a unique resource for the study of chronic diseases including cancer and unexplained racial disparities. Dr. Lipworth is MPI of an ongoing NIEHS-funded study of “Perfluoroalkyl substances and risk of kidney cancer in US men and women” and a Co-Investigator of the NCI-funded Southern Environmental Health Study, which aims to establish a large cohort study in low-income and minority populations to systematically investigate environmental exposures for cancer risk.
Jirong Long, PhD, is a Professor of Medicine within the Division of Epidemiology, Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. The major theme of her research program is to identify novel genetic and epigenetic markers, as well as microbiota for cancer risk to understand the mechanisms of cancer development. Currently, she is the PI/MPI for multiple large genetic epidemiologic studies funded by the NIH, including breast cancer proteome-wide association study (PWAS, R01 CA293996), breast cancer methylation-wide association study (MeWAS, R01 CA247987), breast cancer transcriptome-wide association study (TWAS, R01 CA235553), lung cancer MeWAS/TWAS (R01 CA249863), and lung cancer social epigenomics study (R01 MD015396). She has published over 300 papers, many in high impact journals such as Nature Genetics, Nature Communication, American Journal of Human Genetics, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Cancer Research and others. She has been an invited speaker at national and international academic conferences. She is active as an editor and manuscript reviewer for many peer-reviewed journals.
Harvey Murff, MD, MPH, is a Professor of Medicine and the Director of the Division of Geriatric Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. His research interests include colorectal cancer screening and health disparities, chemoprevention of colorectal cancer, and the impact of genetic factors and dietary intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids on inflammation and cancer risk. He is currently working on using n-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids to reduce pre-term labor risk in pregnant smokers. In addition, he is working on improving care for older adults utilizing home-based geriatric assessments. Dr. Murff has received support for his research from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Dr. Murff maintains a clinical practice at the Tennessee Valley Healthcare System, Nashville Veterans Affairs Hospital.
Tuya Pal, MD, is the Associate Director for Cancer Health Disparities and an Ingram Professor of Cancer Research. Her research is focused on identification of basic or clinical research: genetic risk factors that place individuals at a higher risk for cancer, as well as strategies to reduce this risk, including efforts focused in underserved populations. Her research spans both the cancer prevention and control continuum as well as the care delivery continuum. Since 2005, she has led multiple studies to investigate the etiology of early onset breast cancer in black women. Since she created "https://inheritedcancer.net/" Inherited Cancer Registry (ICARE) Initiative in 2010, she has led multiple efforts to better understand the provision of clinical cancer genetic services across diverse populations, healthcare settings, and providers, at both the patient and provider level.
Ben Park, MD, PhD, is the Benjamin F. Byrd, Jr. Chair in Oncology and Director of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC). Dr. Park is also a Professor in the Department of Medicine's Division of Hematology and Oncology. Dr. Park's research is dedicated to finding a cure for all types of breast cancer by investigating mutated and altered genes responsible for the development and progression of breast cancer, as well as genes that lead to drug resistance. He is actively involved with the VICC Breast Cancer Research Program’s clinical research team to translate his research into clinical practice and patient care.
Martha J. Shrubsole, PhD, is a Research Professor of Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center where she leads a research portfolio of molecular, nutritional, and interventional epidemiology. A major focus of Dr. Shrubsole’s research is to understand the etiology of gastrointestinal neoplasia. She seeks to identify and evaluate modifiable factors, biomarkers, and molecular mechanisms for the prevention, early detection, and precision-based interception of cancer and its precursor lesions Some of these areas of study include nutrients such as one-carbon metabolism, inflammatory markers, gut microbiome, molecular landscape of colorectal polyps, and predictors of metachronous adenomas including in the NCI Moonshot Human Tumor Atlas Network. She has been the Principal Investigator for seven NIH-funded epidemiologic studies, including two large NCI-funded cohort studies seeking to understand and ameliorate cancer health disparities in the US South, the Southern Community Cohort Study and the Southern Environmental Health Study. She has also been co-investigator for more than 20 other NIH-funded studies of cancer and precancer in the US and globally. She has mentored over 30 graduate or medical students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty. Dr. Shrubsole also leads the International Epidemiology Field Station at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and the Vanderbilt Survey Research Shared Resource.
Xiao-Ou Shu, MD, PhD, is an Ingram Professor of Cancer Research, Professor in the Department of Medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, co-leader for the Cancer Epidemiology Program, and Associate Director for Global Health at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. She is a fellow of American College of Epidemiology and Association for Advancement of Science as well as an elected member of the American Epidemiology Society. Dr. Shu’s research has primarily focused on investigating the contributions of the environment, lifestyle factors, and host susceptibility on the etiology and prognosis of cancer and other chronic diseases applying a multi-disciplinary approach. Another line of her research focuses on discovery of biomarkers for cancer early detection and risk assessment. She has been consistently funded by US National Institute of Health since 1996, serving as the principal investigator for more than 26 major research grants and 5 training grants. Currently, she serves as the contact PI for two R01/U01 grants focusing on discovery of biomarkers for pancreatic cancer and biliary track cancer. She is also a joint PI for an R01 grant to investigate the role of gut microbiome in colorectal cancer etiology after a bariatric surgery, an UG3/UH3 grant to establish a sarcoma patient cohort for a longitudinal investigation of the contribution of genetic, cancer treatment and lifestyle factors on disease prognosis and survivorship and an R01 grant searching for protein biomarkers for breast cancer risk assessment. In addition, she is the PI/co-PI for the Vanderbilt Genetic and Molecular Epidemiology of Cancer (MEGEC, T32 CA160056) training program, the Vanderbilt-Zambia Cancer Research (VZCARE, D43 CA270474) training grant and the Vanderbilt-Vietnam Training Program in Genetic Epidemiology (V2GENE, D43 TW012727). Dr. Shu is the recipient of the 2023 F. Peter Guengerich, Ph.D., Award - For Mentoring Postdoctoral Fellows or Residents in the Research Setting from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. She also received an award for Outstanding Contributions in Research from Department of Medicine, Vanderbilt University Medical Center in 2023.
Staci Sudenga, MPH, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Epidemiology whose research focuses on infections and cancer, the natural history of infections, and the synergy between infections. Her goal as a molecular epidemiologist is to conduct research in clinical cohort studies in order to identify biomarkers that increase the risk for cancer that can be translated into primary prevention efforts, early diagnosis, or treatment. Dr. Sudenga has several ongoing studies focused on cancer screening and outcomes in people with HIV.
Digna R Velez Edwards, PhD, MS is a genetic epidemiologist and Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology (OB/GYN). She is the director of the Division of Quantitative and Clinical Sciences in the OB/GYN department and of the Women's Health Research Center in the Institute of Medicine and Public Health. Her primary research is focused on understanding the genetic determinants of reproductive and gynecologic outcomes and their intersection with health disparities. She also has extensive experience both conducting and designing studies that utilize electronic health record (EHR) data in BioVU and research within large EHR biobanks.
Gong Yang, MD, MPH, Research Professor of Medicine, has extensive experience in conducting large cohort studies of cancer epidemiology, nutritional epidemiology, and molecular epidemiology. He has served as the PI or a co-investigator for more than 10 NIH-funded research projects and authored or co-authored more than 300 publications. Currently, he is the contact MPI of an R01 grant to investigate the complex bidirectional and time-varying effect of oxidative stress on colorectal cancer development and prognosis.
Fei Ye, PhD. Dr. Ye is a Professor and Vice Chair of Collaborative Studies in the Department of Biostatistics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC). She holds a secondary appointment in the Division of Epidemiology, Department of Medicine. Dr. Ye is on the faculty of the Vanderbilt Molecular and Genetic Epidemiology of Cancer (MAGEC) Training Program. She has also been called on for international initiatives for the Vietnam National Cancer Institute (VNCI), Vinmec International Hospital, as well as the Vanderbilt-Zambia Cancer Research Training Program. Outside the classroom setting, Dr. Ye has supervised more than a dozen staff biostatisticians and scientists, four of whom have since been appointed to faculty positions in acknowledgment of the caliber of their work. She has also served on dissertation, thesis, and mentoring committees (for scholars in developing countries as well as the United States), and provided crucial support to emerging researchers in their pursuit of major grants. Dr. Ye was appointed Assistant Editor for Statistics for JAMA Oncology in 2020 and elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in 2024.
Danxia Yu, PhD, is an Associate Professor whose primary research interests include 1) epidemiology and prevention of chronic diseases through healthy diets and lifestyles, 2) novel biomarkers and multi-omics studies of metabolic diseases, and 3) diet-gut microbiota interactions and host metabolic health. Her recent projects apply metabolomics and metagenomics to examine the role of diet, gut microbiota, and their interactions in cardiometabolic health and colorectal cancer among individuals with obesity. Dr. Yu is the PI of R01CA275864 titled “Gut Microbiota-related Mechanisms that Impact Colorectal Cancer Risk after Bariatric Surgery.”
Wei Zheng, MD, PhD, is an epidemiologist with a major research focus on evaluating environmental exposures, lifestyle factors, genetics, and biomarkers for cancer risk. He is a professor and Director of the Vanderbilt Epidemiology Center and serves as Associate Director for Population Sciences Research at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. Dr. Zheng has directed more than 20 large population-based studies and six international research consortia. He is the PI the Shanghai Women’s Health Study, an NCI-funded large prospective cohort study of approximately 75,000 women, and a key founding investigator (currently the contact PI) for the Southern Community Cohort Study (~85,000 participants), a landmark study funded by NCI to investigate determinants of racial disparities in incidence and mortality of cancer and other chronic diseases. He also serves as the contact PI for the Southern Environmental Health Study, a new cohort study with a major focus on investigating the exposome for risk of cancer and other chronic diseases. Currently, he leads the largest breast cancer genetic consortium in African-ancestry women and the largest breast and colorectal cancer genetic consortia in Asians with a combined sample size of nearly 500,000 study participants. Dr. Zheng has served as the primary mentor for more than 80 graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and junior investigators and helped many of them develop their independent research career.