Douglas P. Kiel, M.D., M.P.H.
Director Musculoskeletal Research Center and Senior Scientist, Marcus Institute for Aging Research
Associate Member, Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard
Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Kiel's research focuses on the epidemiology of osteoporosis and related fractures, including lifestyle factors, biomarkers, and genetic factors. He is also interested in sarcopenia and its consequences, including falls and disability. He also has conducted multiple clinical trials targeting the musculoskeletal system. He leads the Framingham Osteoporosis Study, and serves in leadership roles for many organizations including the NIH, American Society for Bone and Mineral Research, National Osteoporosis Foundation, and the Joint Commission.
David Karasik, Ph.D.
Associate Scientist, Marcus Institute for Aging Research
David Karasik's overall research focus is in the area of interpersonal variability of aging, ranging from morphological changes in ossified tissues to the genetics of age-related conditions, such as osteoporosis, sarcopenia (muscle wasting), and menopause. His special interest is in identifying the pleiotropic genetic factors governing multiple aging-related traits.
Dr. Karasik has many years of teaching Human Gross Anatomy and Genetic Epidemiology. Currently, he is serving as Head of the Musculoskeletal Genetics lab at the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine, Bar Ilan University, Israel, where he studies zebrafish as a model of human disease.
Yi-Hsiang (Sean) Hsu, Sc.D.
Associate Director Geriomics Program, Marcus Institute for Aging Research
Program for Quantitative Genomics
Molecular and Integrative Physiological Sciences Program, Harvard School of Public Health.
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School
Associate Member, Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard
Dr. Hsu’s research is focused on (1) the genetic contribution to common aging relevant disorders using population-based next generation, whole genome sequencing, exome-sequencing and GWAS approaches; (2) statistical method development on multiple-phenotype association analyses; and (3) identifying biomarkers of osteoporosis using metabolomics.
Michelle Yau, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Assistant Scientist, Marcus Institute for Aging Research
Affiliate Member, Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard
Dr. Michelle Yau is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an investigator in the Musculoskeletal Research Group at the Marcus Institute for Aging Research, Hebrew SeniorLife. Her research focuses on identifying the genetic/genomic contributions to common age-associated conditions such as osteoarthritis (OA), osteoporosis, and intervertebral disc degeneration.
Dr. Yau’s current research aims to identify the genetic components of OA and its relationship to bone. She is particularly interested in bone marrow lesions as an endophenotype for OA. Bone marrow lesions are a specific MRI-feature that may reflect areas of damage in the subchondral bone and represent some of the earliest changes underlying OA pathophysiology. To further understand the genetic contribution to bone marrow lesions, she is conducting a large-scale genome-wide association meta-analysis study of bone marrow lesions and a RNA-sequencing study of OA bone samples. Dr. Yau is also involved in other studies to identify clinical and epigenetic factors related to OA, genetic components of other musculoskeletal endophenotypes such as finger length and bone shape, and African ancestry-specific genetic contributions to bone mineral density.
Dr. Yau received a BS in Biochemistry from the University of Maryland, MPH in Epidemiology from The George Washington University, and PhD in Human Genetics from the University of Maryland. She is an active member of the Association of Rheumatology Health Professionals (ARHP) Research Methodology Committee and Osteoarthritis Research Society International (OARSI) Young Investigator Committee.
Paul C. Okoro, MSc.
Data Scientist II, Marcus Institute for Aging Research
Paul is data scientist with research interest in integrating and leveraging genomics, transcriptomics, epigenomics, microbiome and metagenomics data to advance multi omics research and application to musculoskeletal diseases, aging, and other complex traits.
His educational backgrounds are BSc. in Cell Biology and Genetics from the University of Lagos, MSc. in Epidemiology and Medical Statistics from the University of Ibadan, and MSc. in Bioinformatics from Loyola University Chicago.
Ming-Ju Tsai, Ph.D.
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Marcus Institute for Aging Research
Research Fellow in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School
Dr. Tsai completed his doctoral degree at National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan, where he focused on developing an evolutionary modeling algorithm to reconstruct gene regulatory networks. He is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Hinda and Arthur Marcus Institute for Aging Research. Dr. Tsai is now integrating 3D-genomic structured data (such as Hi-C, ATAC-seq data), functional genomics (such as chip-seq and RNA-seq data), machine learning and systems biology approaches to identify potential causal variants (especially for those non-coding variants) and predict their targeted genes for complex disorders.
Fangtang Yu, Ph.D
Post-doctoral Research Fellow in Statistical Genetics, Marcus Institute for Aging Research
Dr. Yu’s research mainly focuses on the discovery of important biomarkers and causal mechanisms underlying complex human diseases by integrating information from multi-omics sources (genomics, epigenomics, and transcriptomics, etc. She’s currently working on proteomics study of bone biopsy, study of pleiotropy and causal risks of inflammatory cytokines to common diseases, and COVID-19 related chemical genetics. Dr. Yu received her PhD training in Biostatistics from Tulane School of Public Health, where she focused on computational epigenomics for osteoporosis.