Biography

Dr Eric R. Gamazon develops and applies genomic and computational methods to investigate the genetic architecture of complex traits. His laboratory is an interdisciplinary group with expertise in computational genomics and molecular biology. He is interested in what can be learned from DNA sequence, single-cell, and multi-omics data about disease mechanism, therapeutic intervention, molecular evolution, and genome function. An ongoing project involves understanding gene regulation across tissues and cell types. He utilizes large-scale DNA biobank data linked to phenome-scale data, along with data science and computation, to identify genes involved in human health and disease, to discover novel biomarkers, and to enable a comprehensive systems view of the disease phenome.

He is a tenured faculty member in the Division of Genetic Medicine, Department of Medicine, Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC). He has a faculty affiliation with the Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, Center for Precision Medicine, Vanderbilt Memory & Alzheimer's Center, Data Science Institute, and the newly launched Potocsnak Center for Undiagnosed and Rare Disorders.

He is a Life Member (2019 -- present) of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. In 2018, he was elected to a Clare Hall Visiting Fellowship to advance his research and scholarship and mentor graduate students. He has held visiting posts in the Department of Medicine, MRC Biostatistics Unit, and MRC Epidemiology Unit in the University of Cambridge, as well as at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

As co-chair of the GWAS Working Group of the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) project, he was actively involved in an international effort to systematically dissect the effect of genetic variation on gene regulation in a comprehensive set of tissues and create a genomic resource to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying disease-associated regions of the human genome. He has been a member of several other consortia, including the Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) Genetic Exploration by Next-generation Sequencing in Ethnic Samples (T2D-GENES) Consortium, the International Warfarin Pharmacogenetics Consortium – Genome Wide Association Studies (IWPC-GWAS), and the Pharmacogenomics of Anticancer Agents Research (PAAR) Group.

He serves as a co-chair of the Genetics Task Force of the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes consortium (2023 – Present). He also serves on the Steering Committee of the newly-launched DEFINE-T2D (Definition, Etiology, Function: Integration to Enhance Type 2 Diabetes treatment) Consortium (2024 – Present), as a co-PI of a NIDDK-funded research project (U01DK140952).

Dr. Gamazon is the Faculty Mentor for a recently awarded Fulbright Fellowship (August 2023 – June 2024), the most widely recognized and prestigious international exchange program. He has served as a research mentor for a Barry Goldwater Scholar, the nation’s pre-eminent undergraduate award in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). He currently mentors a recipient of the prestigious Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF) Young Investigator Award (NARSAD). He has mentored students and scientists at several institutions, including Northwestern University, The University of Chicago, and the University of Cambridge.