List of Mentors included in this program.
Mentors not listed may still be eligible for this program. If your proposed mentor is not on the lists below, please submit a mentoring request by sending Mentor's Biosketch with tailored personal statement toward training grants to Lyalya Sultanova lyalya.sultanova@hsc.utah.edu
Mentors will complete approved mentor training (before or during award period) unless they have proof of completion in the last 1 to 2 years. All mentors are required to provide current CITI GCP and Human Subject Research certificates.
Discovery Mentors
Name/Degree(s) |
Rank |
Department Affiliation |
Research Area |
Research Interest |
| Orly Alter, PhD | Assoc. Professor | Bioengineering | Genomics, Scientific Computing | Genomic signal processing, integration of different types of large-scale molecular biological data |
| Amy Barrios, PhD | Professor | Medicinal Chemistry | Biological Chemistry | Developing chemical tools to interrogate and manipulate the biological activity of protein phosphatase enzymes |
| Brian Baucom, PhD | Associate Professor | Clinical Psychology | Interaction in romantic relationships | Well-being, psychological distress, psychopathology, chronic health conditions, assessment modalities |
| Joshua Bonkowsky, MD, PhD | Assoc. Professor | Pediatrics Neurology | Human neurogenetic diseases | Human variants in neurological disease in model organisms |
| Sihem Boudina, PhD | Professor | Nutrition & Integrative Physiology | Obesity and Cardiovascular Disease | Adipocyte energy dissipation, oxidative stress, weight gain regulation, adipose tissue expansion |
| Bradley Cairns, PhD | Professor | Oncological Sciences | Genomics | Utilization of epigenomics in understanding chromatin-transcription relationships |
| Nicola J Camp, PhD | Professor | Internal Medicine | Genomics | Developing methods to provide paradigm shifts for genetic discovery and applied gene-finding projects |
| Lisa Cannon-Albright, PhD | Professor | Internal Medicine (Genetic Epidemiology) | Genetic Analysis/Genomics | Genetic research utilizing the unique genealogies and high risk-pedigrees in Utah for complex disorders, including diabetes |
| Mingnan Chen, PhD |
Assistant Professor |
Molecular Pharmaceutics | Immunotherapeutics | Autoimmune diseases, vaccine, protein engineering, recombinant protein and peptide materials, drug delivery, cancer immunotherapy, and metastasis. |
| Qi Chen, MD, PhD |
Associate Professor |
Urology | tRNA-derived small RNAs (tsRNAs) | RNA modifications, epigenetic inheritance, embryonic development |
| Hilary Coon, PhD | Professor | Psychiatry | Genetic Analysis/Genomics | Genetics of psychiatric disorders, incorporating sequencing, gene expression, and epidemiology to understand risk |
| Bryn Dentinger, PhD | Associate Professor | Biology | Fungal Biodiversity and Evolution | Collections-based research, fieldwork, molecular data, DNA barcoding, genome sequencing, metagenomic discovery |
| Jennifer Doherty, PhD | Assoc. Professor | Population Health Sciences | Cancer Population Science | Using molecular epidemiology to leverage bioinformatic approaches towards better understanding cancer |
| Peter Fino, PhD | Assistant Professor | Health, Kinesiology, and Recreation | improving mobility during daily life in people with neurological dysfunction, particularly those with brain injuries | concentrates on functionally relevance that is typical during daily life: Cognitive-Motor interference, brain concussion, balance, motor rehabilitation |
| Jason Gertz, PhD | Assist. Professor | Oncological Sciences | Genomics | Developing technologies for genomics research including gene regulation in particular |
| Jacob George, PhD | Assistant Professor | Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation | Neural networks, artificial networks, and bionic devices | Tactile senses, stroke rehabilitation, sensory processing, sensorimotor interactions, robotics |
| Hamid Ghandehari, PhD | Professor | Pharmaceutics and Bioengineering | Experimental Therapeutics | Development of methods for controlled delivery of bioactive agents |
| Martin Golkowoski, PhD | Assistant Professor | Pharmacology & Toxicology | Cellular plasticity | Proteomics, epigenomics, PPI (protein-protein interaction), Protein-Chromatin Interaction, Cancer Therapy Resistance |
| Christopher Gregg, PhD | Assist. Professor | Neurobiology and Anatomy | Genomics | Discovery of epigenetic effects that alter genetic architecture in the brain and the development of gene therapies |
| David Grunwald, PhD | Professor | Human Genetics | studies cell-intrinsic and as well as intercellular signaling factors that regulate the maintenance or direct the differentiation of tissue precursor cells. | 1) study of transcription regulation in Stem Cell populations; 2) identification of cellular and molecular pathways that confer vulnerability to osteoarthritis and study of the functions of these pathways in maintenance of healthy joints; and 3) optimization of genome modification strategies in the zebrafish |
| Stephen Guthery, MD | Professor | Pediatrics | Genomics | Genetics of immunological disease and clinical study design |
| Tanya Halliday, PhD, RD | Assistant Professor | Health and Kinesiology | Health, Kinesiology, and Recreation | appetite and food-intake regulation in response to lifestyle interventions such as dietary restriction and exercise. Research Interests: development of effective weight loss maintenance strategies like mindfulness-based interventions, lifestyle behavior changes, and exercise and dietary interventions for the prevention and treatment of obesity and related cardiometabolic conditions. |
| Keren Hilgendorf, PhD | Assistant Professor | Biochemistry | Signal Transduction Pathways, Differentiation, Stem Cells, White Adipose Tissue, Primary Cilium, Breast Cancer, Tumor Microenvironment | How the body regulates stem cell differentiation to enable tissue maintenance, repair, and growth. |
| Lynn Jorde, PhD | Professor | Human Genetics | Genomics | Human genetic variation and disease, whole genome sequencing analysis |
| Mei Koh, PhD | Assistant Professor | Pharmacology and Toxicology | Cellular plasticity | Proteomics, epigenomics, PPI (protein-protein interaction), Protein-Chromatin Interaction, Cancer Therapy Resistance |
| Daniel Leung, MD, MSc | Tenured Professor | Infectious Diseases | immunology, epidemiology, and clinical management or diahrreal diseases | MAIT cells, cholera, oral vaccines, diarrheal diseases |
| Carol Lim, PhD | Professor | Molecular Pharmaceutics | Myeloid Leukemia | Molecular mechanisms of signal transduction pathways in cancer, and use peptides or genes as novel therapeutics to disrupt oncogenesis or induce apoptosis |
| Gabor Marth, DSc | Professor | Human Genetics | Genomics | Development of genomic big data analysis tools |
| Martin McMahon, PhD | Professor | Dermatology | Metastatic melanoma, lung, and thyroid cancer | Genetic alterations, cultured human cancer-derived cells, genetically engineered mouse models |
| Frederic Noo, PhD | Tenured Professor | Radiology & Imaging Sciences | CT Imaging Technologies |
Image Reconstruction, Medical Imaging Physics, X-ray Computed Tomography, Image Quality Assessment, Tomography, 3D-Imaging |
| Marcus Pezzolesi, PhD, MPH | Associate Professor | Nephrology | Diabetes | Diabetes etiology, complications, chronic kidney disease (CKD), sequencing, genomics |
| Vicente Planelles, PhD | Professor | Pathology | Lab focus on VPR and signaling events | Understand, at a molecular level, the succession of signaling events that ultimately lead to the induction of apoptosis |
| Aaron Quinlan, PhD | Assoc. Professor | Human Genetics | Genomics | Utilization of computer science and machine learning techniques to develop genomic technologies |
| Russell Richardson, PhD | Professor | Geriatrics | Physiology | Oxygen transport from air to tissue, the link between vascular and skeletal muscle function |
| Viola Rieke, PhD | Research Associate Professor | Radiology and Imaging Sciences | MR-guided focused ultrasound | Accurately predicting temperature change in bone during focused ultrasound treatments |
| John Rolston, MD, PhD | Assist. Professor | Neurosurgery | Epilepsy | Epilepsy surgery, deep brain stimulation (DBS) for movement disorders, focused ultrasound, trigeminal neuralgia, and neuromodulation for psychiatric disorders |
| Paul Sigala, PhD | Assistant Professor | Biochemistry | Malaria Parasite Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Heme and Iron Metabolism, Organelle Metabolism, Regulation, and Adaptation | To develop and apply diverse cellular, genetic, and biochemical tools to uncover general metabolic principles and adaptations governing the unique biology of P. falciparum parasites during infection of human red blood cells and To apply this knowledge to develop novel strategies to target the virulent pathogen. |
| Scott Summers, PhD | Professor | Nutrition & Integrative Physiology | Diabetes and Metabolism | The link between ceramides and metabolic disease |
| Kota Takahashi, PhD | Assistant Professor | Health & Kinesiology | Biomechanics | Prosthetics, energetics, locomotion, ankle-foot |
| Sean Tavtigian, PhD | Professor | Oncological Sciences | Genomics | Areas of genetic susceptibility to cancer |
| Joel Trinity, PhD | Associate Professor | Geriatrics | Aging and cardiovascular function in health and disease | Neural control, oxidative stress, vascular function, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) |
| Martin Tristani-Firouzi, MD | Professor | Pediatric Cardiology | Genomics | Genomic basis of inherited arrhythmia syndromes, functional validation and characterization of putative disease-causing genetic variants, and cardiac development |
| Katherine Varley, PhD | Assist. Professor | Oncological Sciences | Genomics | Gene expression, transcription factor binding, and DNA methylation profiles |
| Alana Welm, PhD | Assoc. Professor | Oncological Sciences | Genomics | Patient-derived xenograft models to allow direct testing of new drugs and comparison in vivo |
| Corrine K Welt, MD | Professor | Endocrinology and Metabolism | Reproductive Disorders | Early identification and intervention, and identification of new treatment targets for infertility |
| Karen Wilcox, PhD | Professor and Chair | Pharacology and Toxicology | Biological Chemistry Program Anticonvulsant Drugs, inflammation, epilepsy | understanding basic mechanisms underlying epileptogenesis, seizure generation, and therapy-resistance to anticonvulsant drugs with the use of electrophysiological, calcium imaging, pharmacological, behavioral, genetic, immunoblot, and immunohistochemical techniques in a variety of in vitro preparations and animal models of epilepsy |
| Mark Yandell, PhD | Professor | Human Genetics | Genomics | Software development for model system and human genome sequencing |
| Deborah Yurgelun-Todd, PhD | Professor | Psychiatry | Neurobiology of Disease, Brain and Behavior, Developmental Neuroscience | Application of MR imaging methods to understand emotional processing and cognitive changes associated with behavioral disorders |
Demonstration Mentors
Name/Degree(s) |
Rank |
Department Affiliation |
Research Area |
Research Interest |
| Nathan Blue, MD | Assistant Professor | Obstetrics And Gynecology | High-risk pregnancies | Interested in studying the treatment of placental abnormalities, unanticipated pregnancy events, and fetal growth restriction |
| Alfred Cheung, MD | Professor | Internal Medicine | Nephrology | Chronic kidney disease and its cardiovascular complications and treatments |
| Clement Chow, PhD | Assistant Professor | Human Genetics | Understanding the role of genetic variation on disease outcomes | Genetic Variation Rare Diseases Genetic Modifiers ER Stress Drosophila Human and Mouse Genetics |
| Erin Clark, MD | Assoc. Professor | Obstetrics/ Gynecology | Maternal-Fetal Medicine | Genetic and environmental factors that contribute to preterm birth and neurodevelopmental sequelae |
| Mollie Cummins, PhD | Assoc. Professor | Nursing | Clinical Informatics/Big Data Analytics | Application of machine learning methods to induce predictive models from health care data |
| J. Michael Dean, MD, MBA | Professor | Pediatrics | Clinical Research Informatics | Data coordination for large scale multi-center clinical trials |
| Guilherme Del Fiol MD, PhD | Assist. Professor | Biomedical Informatics | Clinical Informatics | Delivery of patient-specific clinical evidence from the literature and Web into electronic health records to support clinical decision making |
| Stavros G Drakos, MD, PhD | Professor | Cardiology | Cardiac Recovery | Cardiac recovery associated with unloading and MCS in the chronic heart failure (HF) setting and the acute setting (i.e. acute HF/cardiogenic shock) |
| Karen Eilbeck, PhD | Assoc. Professor | Biomedical Informatics | Genomics/Clinical Informatics | Genome sequence annotation, gene ontologies, precision medicine |
| Lee Ellington, PhD, RN | Assoc. Professor | Nursing | Acute and Chronic Care | Communication with family caregivers of advanced cancer patients and the effect of caregiver wellbeing |
| Angela Fagerlin, PhD | Professor | Population Health Sciences | Decision Aids | Methods to communicate complex medical information to patients and populations |
| Tracy Frech, MD | Assist. Professor | Internal Medicine | Systemic Sclerosis | Early diagnosis and health care delivery to systemic sclerosis patients through meticulous patient phenotyping |
| Julie Fritz, PhD, PT | Professor | Physical Therapy | Musculoskeletal Conditions | Use of large datasets of clinical and claims data and the implementation of evidence-based treatment for low back pain |
| Tom Greene, PhD | Professor | Population Health Sciences | Statistics | Clinical trial design and statistical analysis with expertise in chronic kidney disease |
| Heidi Hanson, PhD | Assistant Professor | Department of Surgery | demographer and has expertise in analysis of population health data | focused on disentangling the interactions of genetic and environmental influences on disease risk throughout the life course |
| Rachel Hess, MD | Professor | Population Health Sciences | Health Systems Innovation Research | Health-related quality-of-life issues across life transitions and in chronic conditions |
| Kensaku Kawamoto, MD, PhD | Assist. Professor | Biomedical Informatics | Clinical Informatics | Clinical decision support, application of informatics to support improvement of clinical outcomes in personalized health care |
| Anne Kirchhoff, PhD, MPH | Tenured Associate Professor | Pediatrics | patient outcomes related to healthcare access and cancer late effects | Cancer Survivorship Childhood Cancer Late Effects |
| Tommaso Lenzi, PhD | Assistant Professor | Mechanical Engineering | design, development and testing of wearable robots such as powered exoskeletons and robotic limb prostheses | Rehabilitation robotics Mechatronics Prosthetics |
| Keith Lohse, PhD | Assistant Professor | Health-Kinesiology | longitudinal data analysis in neurorehabilitation | focuses on how the nervous system learns to perform motor actions, especially in the presence of neurological disease or injury. |
| Jennifer Majersik, MD | Assoc. Professor | Neurology | Stroke Genetics | Bringing disparate researchers from around the world together to provide clarity on phenotyping |
| Kathi Mooney, PhD, RN | Professor | Nursing | Oncology Nursing | Improving symptom science and the patient experience during cancer treatment and survivorship |
| Stefan Pulst, MD | Professor | Neurology | Genomics | Inherited diseases of the nervous system |
| Matthew Rondina, MD | Assoc. Professor | Internal Medicine | Molecular Medicine | Thrombotic disorders |
| Joshua Schiffman, MD | Assoc. Professor | Pediatrics | High Risk Pediatric Cancer | Evaluating, counselling, and treating children and families at high risk for cancer |
| Robert Silver, MD | Professor | Obstetrics and Gynecology | Maternal-Fetal Medicine | recurrent pregnancy loss and stillbirth, cesarean delivery, placenta accreta, vaginal birth after cesarean delivery, immunologic diseases in pregnancy, and medical disorders in pregnancy. |
| Debra Simmons, MD | Professor | Internal Medicine | Diabetes and Endocrinology | Diabetes, lipids, and prevention of complications |
| Rob Singleton, MD | Professor | Neurology | Neurophysiology | Relationship between early hyperglycemia, dyslipidemia, obesity and length dependent nerve injury |
| Cornelia Ulrich, PhD | Professor | Population Health Sciences | Cancer Epidemiology | Genetic and lifestyle factors in the formation and prognosis of cancer with focus on colorectal cancer |
| Michael Varner, MD | Professor | Obstetrics/ Gynecology | Maternal-Fetal Medicine | High risk pregnancy |
| David Viskochil, MD, PhD | Professor | Pediatrics | Clinical Genetics | NF1 and lysosomal storage disorders |
| Kevin Watt, MD, PhD | Professor | Pharmacology & Toxicology | Drug Therapy | Critical illness physiology, pharmacokinetic modeling, pharmacodynamic modeling, biostatistics, clinical trial design, drug dosing |
| Karl Voelkerding, MD | Professor | Pathology | Genomics and Bioinformatics | Development of best practices to prioritize disease-causing variants in patients with no molecular diagnosis |
| Robert Weiss, PhD | Professor | Human Genetics | Genomics | Duchenne muscular dystrophy and behavioral and addiction phenotypes |
| David Wetter, PhD | Professor | Population Health Sciences | Health System Innovation and Research | Inequities in health-related behavior, focusing on high-risk and underserved populations |
Dissemination Mentors
Name/Degree(s) |
Rank |
Department Affiliation |
Research Area |
Research Interest |
| Lisa Aspinwall, PhD | Professor | Psychology | Self-Regulation | Melanoma genetic testing and prevention strategies and self-regulation via processing of negative events |
| Brian Baucom, PhD | Associate Professor | Clinical Psychology | Interaction in romantic relationships | Well-being, psychological distress, psychopathology, chronic health conditions, assessment modalities |
| Margaret Clayton, PhD, APRN | Assoc. Professor | Nursing | Patient-provider communication | Mixed methods to investigate patient-provider communication during cancer survivorship and at the end of life |
| Guilherme Del Fiol MD, PhD | Assist. Professor | Biomedical Informatics | Clinical Informatics | Delivery of patient-specific clinical evidence from the literature and Web into electronic health records to support clinical decision making |
| Angela Fagerlin, PhD | Professor | Population Health Sciences | Decision Aids | Methods to communicate complex medical information to patients and populations |
| Jacob George, PhD | Assistant Professor | Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation | Neural networks, artificial networks, and bionic devices | Tactile senses, stroke rehabilitation, sensory processing, sensorimotor interactions, robotics |
| Tom Greene, PhD | Professor | Population Health Sciences | Statistics | Clinical trial design and statistical analysis with expertise in chronic kidney disease |
| Rachel Hess, MD | Professor | Population Health Sciences | Health Systems Innovation Research | Health-related quality-of-life issues across life transitions and in chronic conditions |
| Jakob Jensen, PhD | Professor | Communication | Health Communication | Design and evaluation of strategic health communication with a special focus on cancer |
| Christopher Johnson, PhD | Professor | Computer Science | Scientific Visualization and Computing | Scientific computing, visualization, and image analysis |
| Kimberly Kaphingst, PhD | Professor | Communication | Genomic literacy | Understanding preferences for return of results and investigating preferences for models of consent among women in the context of utilization of biospecimens for secondary research purposes |
| Kensaku Kawamoto, MD, PhD | Assist. Professor | Biomedical Informatics | Clinical Informatics | Clinical decision support, application of informatics to support improvement of clinical outcomes in personalized health care |
| Jacob Kean, PhD | Assoc. Professor | Population Health Sciences | Health System Innovation and Research | Treatment effectiveness in rehabilitation, including stroke, traumatic brain injury, and chronic pain. |
| Ana María López, MD | Professor | Internal Medicine | Oncology | Improving access to care, specifically through the use of telemedicine to reach underserved communities |
| Kathi Mooney, PhD, RN | Professor | Nursing | Oncology Nursing | Improving symptom science and the patient experience during cancer treatment and survivorship |
| Frederic Noo, PhD | Tenured Professor | Radiology & Imaging Sciences | CT Imaging Technologies |
Image Reconstruction, Medical Imaging Physics, X-ray Computed Tomography, Image Quality Assessment, Tomography, 3D-Imaging |
| Elissa Ozanne, PhD | Assoc. Professor | Population Health Sciences | Health System Innovation and Research | Decision-making, development and testing of clinical decision aids, risk communication methods, cost-effectiveness, and risk modeling |
| Marcus Pezzolesi, PhD, MPH | Associate Professor | Nephrology | Diabetes | Diabetes etiology, complications, chronic kidney disease (CKD), sequencing, genomics |
| Ken Smith, PhD | Professor | Human Development and Family Studies | Demography | Utilization of computer science and machine learning techniques to develop genomic technologies |
| Louisa Stark, PhD | Professor | Human Genetics | Genetics | Comparative effectiveness of educational materials and programs and the effectiveness of health-focused, community-based participatory research projects with diverse, underserved communities |
| David Wetter, PhD | Professor | Population Health Sciences | Health System Innovation and Research | Inequities in health-related behavior, focusing on high-risk and underserved populations |
| Karen Wilcox, PhD | Professor and Chair | Pharacology and Toxicology | Biological Chemistry Program Anticonvulsant Drugs, inflammation, epilepsy | understanding basic mechanisms underlying epileptogenesis, seizure generation, and therapy-resistance to anticonvulsant drugs with the use of electrophysiological, calcium imaging, pharmacological, behavioral, genetic, immunoblot, and immunohistochemical techniques in a variety of in vitro preparations and animal models of epilepsy |
Contact Us
Shaylee Scott
Program Assistant
Email: shaylee.scott@hsc.utah.edu
Lyalya Sultanova
Grants & Contracts Officer
Email: lyalya.sultanova@hsc.utah.edu
Jennifer Zitterkoph
Associate Director, Grants & Contracts
Phone: 801-213-1504
Email: jennifer.zitterkoph@hsc.utah.edu