Division of BIOM About Barnes Team

University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

About Us

Kathleen Carole Barnes, PhD

kathleen.barnes@cuanschutz.edu
Twitter: @kathleencbarnes
Orchid iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3030-4705
linkedin.com/in/kathleen-barnes-18284442

Dr. Barnes is the Director of the Colorado Center for Personalized Medicine in the School of Medicine at the University of Colorado, and Head of the Division of Biomedical Informatics & Personalized Medicine in the Department of Medicine. She joined the University of Colorado in November, 2015, after 23 years of rising through the ranks at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Medicine and the Bloomberg School of Public Health. She received her Ph.D. in biomedical anthropology at the University of Florida, with a concentration in immunology, environmental epidemiology, and medical entomology, and completed a fellowship in immunogenetics at the Johns Hopkins Asthma and Allergy Center in 1994, then joined the faculty until her departure to Denver.

Her research has focused on disentangling the genetic underpinnings contributing to disparities in risk and morbidity associated with complex lung and allergic diseases and diseases of inflammation among ancestrally diverse populations across the Americas. She has initiated and led multicenter, international genomics and multi-omics projects, including the Barbados Asthma Genetics Study (1993-present), resulting in the first genetic linkage study of asthma in an African ancestry population, and which represents the African Caribbean population in the 1000 Genome Project. She launched the NHLBI-supported Consortium on Asthma among African-ancestry Populations in the Americas (CAAPA; 2011-present), the largest asthma genomics study among African admixed individuals representing North, Central and South America, the Caribbean and Africa. Through her previous role as Director of three cores (genetics, genomics, data analysis) in the Johns Hopkins University Department of Medicine and currently a genomics core at the University of Colorado (CU), she has considerable expertise in biobanking, having procured >165,000 biospecimens in her own research laboratory, and high-throughput, cutting edge genomic technologies. She is also Director of the Colorado Center for Personalized Medicine (CCPM), an institutional collaboration linking extensive electronic medical record (EMR) data to ‘omics’ information through the Center’s CLIA Biobank, for which >170K participants have enrolled since 2016.

Publications: PubMed citations

Curriculum Vitae

The Data Analysis Team

Michelle Daya

I am an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical campus, where I apply my PhD training in the field of Statistical Genetics to better understand risk for disease. My primary interest is answering interesting questions by applying statistical methods to data. I love all aspects of working with data (including data cleaning!), and figuring out how to solve data modelling problems optimally yet pragmatically.

Randi Johnson

I am an Epidemiologist who is passionate about applying my strong quantitative and inter-personal skills to improve population health. My research leverages multi-omics data to elucidate factors contributing to immune and autoimmune disease development and progression, specifically studying asthma in my current postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Kathleen Barnes at the Colorado Center for Personalized Medicine. Most days you can find me outside soaking up the abundant sunshine and enjoying one of the many outdoor activities available in beautiful Colorado.

Meher Preethi Boorgula

I am a bioinformatics analyst in Dr. Barnes' data analysis team, with experience working in both wet and dry lab. I am part of several interesting studies led by Dr. Barnes and enjoy applying my skills in laboratory and analytical part of these research studies. I enjoy working with different types of data and building analytical pipelines.

Sameer Chavan

I am a Sr. IT Professional and a Bioinformatics analyst with Dr. Kathleen Barnes’ data analysis research team and also a part of Translational Informatics Services. My primary role is to manage, analyze and interpret large scale genetic data by developing and applying bioinformatics pipelines and enjoy working with web development tools for efficient data visualization.

Nicholas Rafaels

I am the Associate Director of Translational Informatics Services within the Colorado Center for Personalized Medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical campus. My primary role is to manage clinical and research pipelines coming from the CCPM Biobank and integration with electronic health record data in Health Data Compass. I also enjoy working with BIPM faculty and Dr. Barnes’ team to learn new best practices in analysis of genomic data. Dr. Barnes and I have worked together for 15 years and I am happy to assist in her projects as needed.

Corey Cox

I am a Senior Professional Research Assistant at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. I am applying my background in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology along with skills from my Biomedical Science and Biotechnology Masters training to Genome-Wide data analysis. My primary interest is in creating reproducible pipelines for data analysis. I am currently enjoying applying functional programming ideas to my data-analysis workflows to improve the maintainability of my scripts and workflows.

Chris Arehart

I am a professional research assistant (PRA) and am broadly interested in computational biology. My research experience ranges from infectious disease surveillance to various "-omics" analyses. I am interested in how the intersection of data science, applied mathematics, and bioinformatics can help us better understand the natural world. My current projects focus on the polygenic scoring (PRS) and the expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) of allergic diseases. I am passionate about cultivating an interdisciplinary approach to medicine by making sense of complicated data.

Colorado Anschutz Genetics Resource Organization (CARGO)

Monica Campbell

Monica Campbell graduated from the University of Baltimore with a concentration in Biotechnology and Forensic Science. She attended the University of Maryland for graduate studies and obtained an MS degree in Biotechnology Management and Project Management. Monica has worked as a researcher at the Johns Hopkins University for 15 years, first with the Genetic Core Research Facility (GCRF) in fragment analysis, and in Clinical Immunology at the Bayview Genetics Research Facility (BGRF). Monica also has experience in Forensics at the Baltimore City Police Department focusing on crime scene investigation and DNA serology. In 2015, she obtained a position at the University of Colorado in the Department of Bioinformatics and Personalized Medicine. Her current position entails leading the CARGO service center and the Barnes laboratory, which focuses on gene environmental interactions and the interface of innate and adaptive immunity in the immunogenetics of various complex lung diseases such as asthma, atopic dermatitis and schistosomiasis.