CHRISTA CAGGIANO
Email: christa@g.ucla.edu
Website: www.christa.science
Github: ChristaCaggiano
Google Scholar: Christa Caggiano
Current Position:
Postdoctoral Fellow / Institute of Genomic Health
2023 - present /Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York
Advisor: Eimear Kenny
Education:
University of California Los Angeles / 2017 - 2023 / Los Angeles, California
Ph.D., Bioinformatics
- Thesis: Bioinformatic strategies for population precision health
- Advisor: Noah Zaitlen
Brandeis University / 2013 - 2017 / Waltham, Massachusetts
B.S., Biological Physics with honors / B.A., Art History
Minor, Computer Science
- Thesis: Bioinformatic approaches to chromatin structure and RNA editing in Drosophila melanogaster
- Advisor: Michael Rosbash
Grants:
NIH NINDS F31 / April 2021 - March 2023 “A Comprehensive Protocol for Tissue of Origin Prediction in Circulating Cell-Free DNA”
Honors and Awards:
October 2022 / ASHG
Epstein Pre-Doctoral Semi-Finalist
October 2019 / ProbGen
Trainee Travel Award
Fall 2019 / UCLA
Neurogenetics T32 Awardee
May 2017 / Brandeis University
Sandra Fisher Prize for Exceptional Achievement in the Creative Arts
Summer 2016 / Brandeis University
Provost Undergraduate Research Grant
Research Experience:
Graduate Research Assistant / UCLA
2017 - 2023 / Los Angeles, California
- Developed technological, statistical, and computational methodologies that successfully predict ALS status from a non-invasive blood test that measures epigenetic features in cell-free DNA (paper, Github)
- Led project on analyzing population structure in the UCLA biobank, identifying health disparities in diverse ancestry groups, including never before studied health risks in Iranians, Armenians, and Filipinos (paper, Github, website)
Bioinformatics Intern / Asuragen
Summer 2017 / Austin, Texas
- Developed Bayesian statistical methods that have up to 99.9% specificity in identifying cancerous mutations in a non-invasive cancer screening technology
Research Assistant / Rosbash Laboratory, Brandeis University
2014-2017 / Waltham, Massachusetts
- Built a bioinformatics pipeline in R to analyze high-throughput sequencing data to quantify the biology of sleep
- Designed and carried out phenotypic genetic screens in Drosophila
- Performed ATAC-seq and RNA-seq next-generation sequencing experiments
Student Scholar / Women’s Studies Research Center
2014-2017 / Waltham, Massachusetts
- Created statistical workflow in SPSS and R to develop a major thesis about Pagan religious behavior
- Contributed data insights to the book, Solitary Pagans
Research Assistant / Laboratory for Laser Energetics
2012-2014 / Rochester, New York
- Fabricated liquid crystal radial and azimuthal polarization converters which were used in academic and industrial research settings to increase laser power and efficiency.
Publications:
- Caggiano*, C., Morselli*, M., Qiang, X., Celona, B., Thompson, M., “Tissue informative cell-free DNA methylation sites in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.”, MedRxiv, April 2024, DOI: 10.1101/2024.04.08.24305503
- Boltz T., Schwartz T., Bot M., Hou K., Caggiano C., et al., “Cell-type deconvolution of bulk-blood RNA-seq reveals biological insights into neuropsychiatric disorders.”, The American Journal of Human Genetics, January 2024, DOI: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2023.12.018
- Caggiano, C., Boudaie A., Shemirani R., Mefford J., Petter E., Chiu A., Ercelen D., et al., “Disease risk and healthcare utilization among ancestrally diverse groups in the Los Angeles region.”, Nature Medicine, July 2023, DOI: 10.1038/s41591-023-02425-1
- Johnson R., Ding Y., Venkateswaran V., Bhattacharya A., Chiu, A., Schwarz T., Freund M., Zhan L., Burch K.S., Caggiano C., et al., “Leveraging genomic diversity for discovery in an EHR-linked biobank: the UCLA ATLAS Community Health Initiative”, Genome Medicine, September 2022, DOI: 10.1186/s13073-022-01106-x
- Caggiano C., Celona B., Garton F., Mefford J., Black B., Lomen-Hoerth C., Dahl A., Zaitlen N., “Estimating the rate of cell type degeneration from epigenetic sequencing of cell-free DNA”, Nature Communications, May 2021, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-22901-x
- Van Paemel R., De Koker A., Caggiano C., Morlion A., Mestdagh P., De Wilde B., Vandesompele J., De Preter K.M, “Genome-Wide Study of the Effect of Blood Collection Tubes on the Cell-Free DNA Methylome” Epigenetics, October 2020, DOI: 10.1080/15592294.2020.1827714
- Newberry R. W., Arhar T., Costello J., Hartoularos G. C., Maxwell A. M., Naing Z. Z. C., Pittman M., Reddy N. R., Schwarz D. M. C., Wassarman D. R., Wu T. S., Barrero D., Caggiano C., et al. “Robust Sequence Determinants of α-Synuclein Toxicity in Yeast Implicate Membrane Binding”, ACS Chemical Biology, July 2020, DOI: 10.1021/acschembio.0c00339
Invited Presentations:
UCLA Neurogenetics EHR Workshop
May 2024 / Los Angeles, California
American Statistical Society STATGEN 2024
May 2024 / Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Regeneron DRIFT Symposium
October 2022 / Los Angeles, California
Conference Presentations:
American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG)
October 2022 / Los Angeles, California
Research in Computational Molecular Biology (RECOMB)
June 2020 / Padova, Italy (online due to Covid-19)
American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG)
October 2019 / Houston, Texas
Probabilistic Modeling in Genomics (ProbGen)
October 2019 / Aussois, France
Northern California Computational Biology Symposium
October 2018 / San Francisco, California
Poster Presentations:
European Society for Human Genetics (ESHG)
June 2022 / Vienna, Austria
Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE)
July 2021 / online due to Covid-19
Women in Computational Biology
November 2019 / Washington, D.C.
Probabilistic Modeling In Genomics (ProbGen)
November 2018 / Cold Spring Harbor, New York
OMEGA Laser User’s Group
April 2013 / Rochester, New York
Teaching Experience:
2020-present / Horizons Labs
Bioinformatics mentor to underrepresented high school students
2017 / Department of Computer Science, Brandeis University
Teaching Assistant in Introduction to Python
2016-2017 / Department of Physics, Brandeis University
Provost Teaching Assistant, Physics I/II