The Raffield Lab is a human genetics research group in the Department of Genetics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We work to identify genetic variants associated with hematology, hemostasis, and inflammation traits in diverse cohort and biobank studies and in collaboration with multiple groups and consortia. We then seek to link those variants to their molecular function through integration of functional annotation and rapidly expanding multi-omic datasets (including epigenomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic data), and to understand links between these traits and health outcomes including Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias and cardiometabolic disease. In all of our work we focus on improved inclusion of diverse populations, notably Black and Hispanic/Latinx populations underrepresented in genomics research.
For more details see the Research page.
Latest News
Laura Raffield receives U01 grant from NIA for project on the mechanisms behind racial disparities in Alzheimer’s disease
Laura Raffield has received a U01 grant from NIA for a proposal to investigate the higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) for Black adults compared with non-Hispanic White adults. The project “hypothesize[s] that inflammation may be a key feature linking cardiometabolic and social determinants of health disparities with the risk of incident … Read more
Madeline Gillman, Daeeun Kim and Jayna Nicholas received travel awards to CHARGE meeting
Madeline Gillman, Daeeun Kim and Jayna Nicholas received travel awards to the May 22-24 CHARGE meeting in Denver where Madeline presented on Influence of Longitudinal Proteomic Trajectories on Cardiac Structure and Function in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study, Daeeun presented on The Impact of Long-term Exposure to Air Pollution on Plasma Proteomic and Metabolomic … Read more
Micah Hysong received NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
Micah Hysong received a NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, a five-year fellowship that provides three years of financial support. The goal of the NSFGR Program is to “broaden participation of the full spectrum of diverse talents in STEM.” Micah was selected based on his his research proposal “Leveraging Multi-omic data from Individuals with African Ancestry to … Read more
Raffield lab and Li group researchers present at ASHG annual meeting.
Researchers from the Raffield lab, as well as Raffield lab collaborators from the Li lab group had presentations or posters at the American Society for Human Genetics annual meeting (Nov. 1-5 2023). Brian Chen held his oral presentation Proteome-Wide Association Study Using Cis and Trans Variants and Applied to Blood Cell and Lipid-Related Traits in … Read more