About

Research Interests

• Computational Biology
• Cancer biology
• Statistics
• Physiology

Lay Summary

I am interested in how a patient’s physiology - for example, obesity - shapes the profiles of their cancers, and how their cancers, in turn, modify the patient’s physiology.

Scientific Summary

Obesity is a major risk factor for at least 13 types of cancer, but how it acts as one remains unknown. Other well-known risk factors such as smoking, alcohol, and ultraviolet radiation are generally thought to lead to damages in your DNA, termed mutations. These are then thought to lead to abnormal cells that eventually, given the right conditions, become cancerous. However, obesity is unique from this perspective; no evidence has suggested that it is associated with mutations, and so how it contributes to the risk of developing so many cancers remains a mystery.