April Shu

April Shu, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences and the Center for Genetic Epidemiology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. Her research focuses on psychiatric genetics, epigenetics, and single-cell transcriptomics, leveraging machine learning to study mental and behavioral disorders. She leads the Shu Lab, which investigates autism genetics, substance use epigenetics, and precision medicine approaches in mental health.

Education:

• PhD in Mental Health (Psychiatric Genetics), Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
• MS in Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins University
• MS in Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Research Interests: Dr. Shu’s work bridges computational methods with genetic epidemiology, emphasizing:

• Identification of genetic/epigenetic factors in autism and substance use disorders
• Machine learning applications in health data analysis
• Gene-environment interactions in aging and cognitive health

Key Contributions: Recent work includes uncovering novel autism risk genes, developing biomarkers for opioid toxicity, and analyzing how urban greenness interacts with genetic factors in cognitive outcomes.

Awards:

• 2020 College on Problems of Drug Dependence Early Career Award
• 2018 DREAM Challenge Winner (Single-cell Transcriptomics)
• 2016 Lucy Shum Memorial Scholarship

Lab & Team: The Shu Lab collaborates across disciplines to advance computational genetics. Their work is published in top journals like Nature Genetics and Genetics in Medicine.