It’s official—spring is here and everything’s blooming in Cleveland (Figures 1 and 2). The sun is out, which puts a spring in our step. You know what else puts a spring in my step? Good news from the Crawford lab!
Figure 1. Blossoms (cherry?) in front of the Kelvin Smith Library, a great place to print your posters, BTW!
Figure 2. The tulips are out. In this case, the tulips are out and about in front of the Thwing Center.
First thing’s first: kudos to current Crawford crew member Brittany Hollister for surviving her latest committee meeting. Brittany has been working hard on designing and testing her algorithm to extract socioeconomic status from electronic health records (with a little help from Dr. Nicole Restrepo). Brittany is putting the finishing touches on her evaluation and is anxious to write this one up over the summer. Her undergraduate manuscript published earlier this year (PMID:26482085) is getting lonely and wants a PubMed pal!
Alum Dr. Logan Dumitrescu’s recent manuscript “Towards a phenome-wide catalog of human clinical traits impacted by genetic ancestry,” also co-authored by alum Dr. Nicole Restrepo, was recently highlighted by BioData Mining (Figure 3; PMID:26566401). Almost 1,000 access requests have been recorded for this article, so this little paper seems to be making a big splash with the BioData Mining readership.
Figure 3. Look ma! Our article is being highlighted by BioData Mining!
Alum Dr. Matt Oetjens has had a stellar 2016 so far. Our Nature Reviews Genetics manuscript on phenome-wide association studies (PheWAS) made a huge splash in March (PMID:26875678). We’ve racked up >3,200 views on the website so far! If that weren’t enough, Matt’s Master’s manuscript on genetic ancestry in NHANES hit the presses with Frontiers in Genetics. Finally, Matt’s PhD work describing his pharmacogenomic PheWAS among patients with electronic health records is in press with Pharmacogenomics (Future Medicine). A huge pat on the back to Matt for getting all his papers out!
Congratulations are also in order for alum Dr. Jennifer Malinowski. Jennifer has just been promoted to Medical Research Analyst with Hayes. Way to go, Jennifer!
Although not officially a past or present Crawford crew member, I must mention Dr. Jessica Cooke Bailey. Jessica was recently named a Clinical & Translational Science Collaborative (CTSC) KL2 scholar. And, she just received recognition for her ACES+ travel supplement to give a presentation at the 2016 Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing on the Big Island of Hawaii (PMCID:PMC4720994). Dr. Cooke Bailey is one to watch as she transitions from training to independence here at CWRU!
Figure 4. Drs. Nicole Restrepo and Mariusz Butkiewicz enjoy some dessert at Crop Kitchen during the EPBI end of the semester party (April 2016).
Last but not least is past Crawford crew member Dr. Nicole Restrepo. Nicole submitted her diabetic retinopathy algorithm applied to electronic health records manuscript, and it was accepted for the proceedings as part of the 2016 Joint Summits on Translational Science AMIA meeting in San Francisco. Nicole gave a great talk at the meeting in March. And apparently that’s not all that happened in March. All I can say is best wishes to the happy couple (Figure 4)!
