The overarching theme of our research is improving understanding of the evolution of immunogenetic variation and its impact on human health and disease. In practice, our work emphasizes the rigorous application of population genetics theory and methods with scrupulous attention to consistent and standardized management of diverse data sets. A primary focus is analysis of the highly polymorphic Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) loci for autoimmune disease association, transplant, population genetics and evolutionary studies. We also study a related gene system, the Killer-cell Immunoglobulin-like Receptor (KIR) loci. Because these receptors interact with HLA to mediate activity of natural killer cells, their variation alone, or in tandem with HLA, has a prominent role in many disease processes and the evolution of human immunity. 

We integrate our work in immunogenetics with new and ongoing research within the Department of Neurology, to advance efforts to elucidate the genetic basis of underlying immune dysregulation in neurological diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS) and Parkinson’s Disease. In addition to basic research in immune response genetics, our work developing data management and analysis standards supports data-intensive projects within the MS research group, including projects related to data integration for multicenter cohorts and tools for precision medicine.

We categorized our research into 4 groups: