Dr. Lars Steinmetz

Biography

Biography PhD 1997-2001, Stanford University. Postdoctoral research at Stanford Genome Technology Center. Visiting group leader since 2003. Co-Director since 2013. Group leader at EMBL since 2003. Senior Scientist since 2009. Joint Head of Genome Biology Unit 2009-2013. Associate Head of Unit 2013-2016. Professor of Genetics, Stanford University since 2013. Director of Life Science Alliance since 2017. ERC Advanced Investigator since 2012.

Research Interest

Previous and current research One of the most daunting obstacles in biomedicine is the complex nature of most phenotypes (including cancer, diabetes, heart disease and some rare diseases) due to interactions between multiple genetic variants and environmental influences. A central challenge is to understand how genetic and environmental perturbations affect health, wellness and disease. Our research is directed at understanding such complex traits. To do so, we develop novel genomic approaches to study the molecular processes that link genotype to phenotype, identify the causal underlying factors, and quantify their contributions. We investigate inter-individual variation at the level of the genome, transcriptome, and proteome, which we integrate with higher-level phenotypes. Our projects are mainly in the following areas: Quantitative genetics: We have piloted new technologies to dissect the genetic and environmental interactions that underlie complex, multifactorial phenotypes. We are interested in studying the consequences of genetic variation, learning to predict phenotype from genotype, and integrating multiple layers of molecular data to define intervention points that can be targeted to modulate phenotypes of interest (figure 1).