Using large-scale biobanks and computational genomics, Christa works to identify and characterize monogenic diseases in historically underrepresented populations—helping ensure that genomic discoveries can benefit everyone.

✋ Meet the Kenny Lab Team: Christa Caggiano, PhD Christa is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Kenny Lab at the Mount Sinai Institute for Genomic Health and studies the genetic basis of disease across diverse populations, helping advance more equitable genomic medicine.

🧬 Autoimmune diseases may affect different parts of the body—but genomics is revealing shared genetic risk factors and immune pathways across conditions. These insights could reshape how we understand, classify & treat disease. 🔗

methods when studying admixed populations. 👏 Congratulations to first author and former Kenny Lab member Sinead Cullina, PhD; Ruhollah Shemirani, PhD; Samira Asgari, PhD; Eimear Kenny, PhD; and their collaborators on this work!

While GWAS identified more significant associations overall, admixture mapping uncovered 77 signals—including 48 that were not detected by GWAS. The findings demonstrate how the two approaches can capture distinct aspects of genetic architecture and highlight the value of using complementary

A new Kenny Lab-led study published in Nature Communications systematically compares admixture mapping (AM) and genome-wide association studies (GWAS) across more than 800 clinical phenotypes using data from Hispanic/Latino and African American participants in Mount Sinai’s BioMe Biobank.

🧬🌎 New Research from the Kenny Lab | Expanding Genetic Discovery in Admixed Populations How can different approaches to genetic analysis reveal different pieces of the genetic architecture underlying human health and disease?

At the GAPsLab, we study the complex relationships between mental health, genetics, aging, and age-related conditions. By integrating genomic and other omics data with electronic health records, our research seeks to better understand the biological mechanisms underlying mental health and

🧠🧬 October 10 is World Mental Health Day. Mental health is an important part of health across the lifespan, influencing quality of life, cognitive function, physical health, and healthy aging.

The authors also highlight opportunities to translate insights from founder population research into genomic medicine. 👏 Congratulations to Christa Caggiano, PhD; Ruhollah Shemirani, PhD; and Eimear Kenny, PhD on this Kenny Lab publication!

The review examines the historical contributions of founder populations to genetics, modern approaches for studying population structure, and the analytical, interpretive, and ethical considerations that emerge as research moves into increasingly large and diverse genomic datasets.

Once studied primarily through relatively small, specifically identified populations, founder effects can now be detected and characterized at biobank scale across populations around the world.

Kenny Lab postdoctoral fellow Christa Caggiano, PhD, leads a new review in the Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics exploring how the rapid growth of global genomic databases is transforming our understanding of founder populations.