Gao Wang, PhD
- Assistant Professor of Neurological Sciences (in Neurology and the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center)
On the web
Overview
Dr. Wang is a geneticist and statistician who develops and applies computational and statistical approaches to understand the genetic basis of Alzheimer’s disease. He received training in statistical genetics at the Beijing Institute of Genomics (2009), Baylor College of Medicine (2014), and the University of Chicago (2020), where he worked with leaders in human genetics and statistical methodology. At Columbia, he directs a Statistical Functional Genomics Lab in the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center, and teaches graduate courses in the Department of Biostatistics. His lab currently has trainees from diverse quantitative and biomedical backgrounds, including statistics, biostatistics, bioinformatics, epidemiology, and basic medical sciences.
Academic Appointments
- Assistant Professor of Neurological Sciences (in Neurology and the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center)
Gender
- Male
Credentials & Experience
Education & Training
- PhD, 2014 Baylor College of Medicine
- Fellowship: 2020 University of Chicago
Research
Dr. Wang uses Alzheimer’s disease as a model to understand how genetic variation shapes gene regulation across the functional domain of the central dogma and how dysregulation of these processes contributes to neurodegeneration and disease. His approach is data-driven, generating new molecular datasets, analyzing them to uncover biological insights, and developing statistical methods as challenges arise from the data. His computational work spans statistical methodology for rigorous inference, software packages and bioinformatics pipelines for large-scale data processing, and discovery-oriented analysis to connect genetic variants to molecular mechanisms. In particular, he contributed to genetic fine-mapping and colocalization analysis to identify putative causal variants, genes and their molecular consequences across multiple omics layers. He leads the FunGen-xQTL Project within the NIH Alzheimer’s Disease Sequencing Project Functional Genomics Consortium, coordinating the generation and analysis of multi-omics quantitative trait loci (QTL) data from brain tissues to build resources that advance understanding of both Alzheimer’s disease etiology and fundamental principles of human gene regulation.