Meet the Team
Roseann E. Peterson, PhD
POP-GEM Lab Director
Dr. Peterson is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the State University of New York Downstate Health Sciences University (SUNY Downstate) and is a psychiatric statistical geneticist versed in population-scale genetic studies applied to genome-wide association studies, polygenic risk profiling, and fine-mapping analyses. She serves in several leadership roles and is the Chair of the PsycheMERGE Diversity Initiative, Co-Chair of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium Cross-Population Working Group, and Associate Director of Statistical Genetics in the Institute for Genomics in Health (IGC) at SUNY Downstate. She also has a special interest in ethics in research and policy and serves on the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access committee of the International Society of Psychiatric Genetics and is the Director of Education in Research Ethics and Scientific Integrity in the Office of the Senior Vice President of Research at SUNY Downstate.
Eva Lancaster, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Lancaster's PhD training was in Quantitative Human Genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is currently a IRACDA postdoctoral fellow at VIPBG under the mentorship of Dr. Peterson. Dr. Lancaster studies how genes and environment contribute to postpartum depression and other women's health outcomes.
Rowan K. O'Hara
Research Associate
Rowan is a recent graduate from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) with Bachelor's degrees in Bioinformatics and Psychology. She is now a Master's student studying Bioinformatics at VCU. At the POP-GEM Lab, Rowan studies major depression across ancestral groups using genome-wide association studies (GWAS).
Amanda Gentry, PhD
Assistant Professor
Dr. Gentry's PhD training was in biostatistics with a concentration in genomics. Dr. Gentry develops novel and innovative statistical methods for applicable to both continuous and categorical phenotypes with molecular genetic data of many types, including whole-genome sequencing data.
Terrell A. Hicks, MS
5th year Clinical Psychology Doctoral Candidate
Mr. Hicks is a PhD student in the Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program at the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University. His long-term research goals are largely focused on the identification of potentially modifiable environmental variables that increase risk for post-trauma psychopathology (& interaction with genetic variants), with the aim of translating these findings into culturally sensitive prevention and secondary intervention programs.
Mariam Sankoh
Integrative Life Science Doctoral Candidate
Mariam is a PhD student in the Integrative Life Science Doctoral Program at Virginia Commonwealth University at the Team RIA and POP-GEM Lab. Mariam studies psychosis across diverse populations using epidemiological and population genetic based techniques incorporated with standard genetic techniques.
Madhur Singh
Quantitative Human Genetics Doctoral Candidate
Madhur is a PhD student in Quantitative Human Genetics at VCU School of Medicine and the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics (VIPBG). With a background in Medicine from India and in Health Policy from Norway, Madhur’s primary research interests are in the applications of Psychiatric and Statistical Genetics in advancing Precision Medicine in Psychiatry. At the POP-GEM lab, he studies cross-population heterogeneity in the genetic architecture of depression and substance use disorders.
B. Todd Webb, PhD
Omics Research Scientist, Principal Investigator at RTI International
Dr. Webb is trained in quantitative human genetics with an emphasis on complex genetics and bioinformatics and has a background in molecular biology and genomics. He has performed statistical and bioinformatic analyses using data from multiple high-throughput ‘omic’ platforms including whole-genome sequencing, genome-wide association, copy number variation, expression, metabolomic, and proteomic studies across multiple species. Dr. Webb has several collaborative projects with the POP-GEM Lab including Chair of the Bioinformatics core.
GREAT Mentees
Zakira Debraux
Undergraduate Research Assistant at VCU
Tene'Sha Crews
Undergraduate Research Assistant at VCU
Hailie Suarez-Rivas
Undergraduate Research Assistant at VCU