Laura Almasy, Ph.D.

Laura Almasy, Ph.D., is a Professor of Genetics at the Perelman School of Medicine and is part of the Lifespan Brain Institute and the Department of Biomedical and Health Informatics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Almasy is a leading statistical geneticist, known for her contribution to the development and application of statistical methods for the localization and identification of genetic effects on common, complex diseases and related quantitative traits. Dr. Almasy directs the Genetic Analysis Workshop, an international forum for development and testing of statistical genetic methods and has made a major contribution to the development of novel statistical genetics methods for family-based analysis. She also applies these state-of-the-art methods to study the genetic basis of a wide range of complex diseases, from cardiovascular disease and metabolic disorders to neuropsychiatric illness, including schizophrenia and alcohol dependence, as well as to normal variation in brain structure and function. Dr. Almasy brings an important expertise in integrative analysis of genotype, sequence and phenotype data in extended families.