Dr. Brunilda Balliu

Biography

Brunilda Balliu is an Assistant Professor at UCLA in the Department of Computational Medicine and the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. She obtained her Bachelor of Science in Statistics from Athens University of Economics and Business in Greece and earned her Ph.D. in Statistical Genetics from Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands. Her postdoctoral research was conducted at Stanford University under the supervision of Stephen Montgomery, focusing on methods to understand the role of inherited variation in the molecular basis of complex traits. Since joining UCLA in 2018 as an Independent Fellow, she has developed a research program that revolves around creating novel statistical methodologies and computational tools for analyzing sparsely and irregularly sampled high-dimensional functional data from high-throughput genomic assays, mobile phone sensors, and electronic health records. Dr. Balliu's research delves into the genetic, molecular, cellular, and environmental mechanisms that underpin complex human traits and diseases, and she is particularly interested in the context-specific genetic regulation related to metabolic and psychiatric phenotypes. Dr. Balliu is a recipient of the Charles J. Epstein Postdoctoral Award for Excellence in Human Genetics Research from the American Society of Human Genetics and has received a five-year grant from NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute as part of the newly established Impact of Genomic Variation on Function Consortium.

Research Interests