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Priyanka Ahimaz, MS, CGC
Assistant Professor of Genetic Counseling (in Pediatrics) at Columbia University Medical CenterPriyanka Ahimaz is a senior genetic counselor at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center General Genetics division and an Assistant Professor of Genetic Counseling at Columbia University. She currently specializes in the care of patients with inherited cardiomyopathies, connective tissue disorders and skeletal dysplasias.
Priyanka is the lead coordinator of the Congenital Anomalies Research Exploration (CARE), an NIH-funded study run by Dr. Wendy Chung that investigates genomic factors contributing to the formation of various birth defects, currently focusing on tracheoesophageal defects. Her research interests also include studying the effects of genetic testing on the lives of patients. She is currently working on a project with the Children’s Cardiomyopathy Foundation to understand the psychological impact of genetic testing for cardiomyopathy in children.
Priyanka is a graduate of the Arcadia University Genetic Counseling program has had 10 years of experience in clinical care, research and education in genetics. She is a member of the New York State Genetics Task Force and National Society of Genetic Counselors.
Elinor Karlsson, PhD
Director of the Vertebrate Genomics Group at Broad Institute of MIT and HarvardElinor Karlsson is associate professor in Bioinformatics and Integrative Biology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and director of Vertebrate Genomics at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Her research combines new technology, citizen science and the power of evolution to investigate how DNA works, and to use that knowledge to improve the health and wellbeing of people, pets and threatened species.
Dr. Karlsson has a special interest in dog genetics, and her international Darwin’s Ark project (DarwinsArk.org) invites all dog owners to enroll their dogs in an open data research project exploring the genetic basis of dog behavior, as well as diseases such as compulsive disorders, food allergies and cancer. To date, over 23,000 dogs have enrolled, and their owners have answered over 2½ million survey questions. As part of this project, Dr. Karlsson is studying the remarkably complicated genetic ancestry of mixed breed dogs (MuttMix.org).
Dr. Karlsson’s other projects include the 200 Mammals Genome Project, an international effort to compare the genomes of over 240 mammals, from the African Yellow-spotted Rock Hyrax to the Woodland Dormouse, to identify critically important segments of DNA. In collaboration with Zoo New England, she is developing tools that uses genomics to tackle heritable diseases, like heart disease, common in some Zoo populations (a project dubbed “Zoonomics”). Finally, Dr. Karlsson has a long-standing interest in infectious diseases. She is studying recent human evolution to find the genetic variation that makes some people resistant to ancient infectious diseases, like cholera. She also leads Project Acari (projectAcari.org), a citizen science project that is mapping the epidemiology of tickborne diseases by studying ticks sent in by people from across the United States.
Elinor received her B.A. in biochemistry/cell biology from Rice University, and earned her Ph.D. in bioinformatics from Boston University. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University before starting the Karlsson Lab at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 2014.
Mark Stoeckle, MD
Senior Research Associate at the Program for the Human Environment, Rockefeller UniversityMark Stoeckle is Senior Research Associate in the Program for the Human Environment at The Rockefeller University. Dr. Stoeckle's interests include environmental genomics, DNA barcoding, and visual representation of information. Dr. Stoeckle helped establish DNA barcoding as a practical tool for identifying animal and plant species by DNA. His DNA barcoding work with high school students attracted wide attention including front-page articles in New York Times ("Sushi-gate"), Washington Post (“DNAHouse”), and Wall Street Journal (“National Cockroach Project”). Since 2015 he has been advancing environmental DNA (eDNA) as a low-cost, low-impact tool for monitoring ocean animals. He published the first eDNA study of New York Harbor, co-organized the first National Conference on Marine eDNA, and recently completed an eDNA survey of the Gowanus Canal, which showed a surprising diversity of fishes.
Dr. Stoeckle is a graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Medical School and completed his medical training in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases at The New York-Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Medical College in New York City. Prior to joining Rockefeller in 2003, he was a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and an Associate Attending Physician at The New York Presbyterian Hospital.