Elizabeth Atkinson

Elizabeth Atkinson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine, where she leads the Atkinson Lab. Her research focuses on developing statistical and computational tools to improve the study of the genetic basis of neuropsychiatric traits in admixed populations. She is affiliated with the Computational and Integrative Biomedical Research Center and the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Baylor.

Dr. Atkinson's research spans three primary areas: (1) applied and analytic work in statistical genetics; (2) investigations into human population structure and evolutionary history; and (3) the development of scalable computational methods and tools for population-aware genetic analysis. Her work emphasizes neuropsychiatric traits with a particular focus on admixed American populations, though many of the tools she develops are broadly applicable across phenotypes and populations.

She plays a leadership role in multiple international consortia, including the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PTSD working group), Neuropsychiatric Genetics in African Populations (NeuroGAP), and the Latin American Genomics Consortium (LAGC). These collaborations support the development of globally representative resources for gene discovery and offer trainees valuable experience working with large-scale, richly phenotyped cohorts.

Her recent publications reveal a strong focus on improving genomic analysis in diverse populations, with particular emphasis on local ancestry inference, cross-ancestry genetic studies, and addressing disparities in genomics research across ancestries. She has developed methods like Tractor that use local ancestry to enable the inclusion of admixed individuals in GWAS.

• International meta-analysis of PTSD genome-wide association studies
• Genetic structure correlates with ethnolinguistic diversity in eastern and southern Africa
• Tractor uses local ancestry to enable the inclusion of admixed individuals in GWAS
• Low-coverage sequencing cost-effectively detects variation in underrepresented populations

Dr. Atkinson mentors several trainees including postdoctoral associates, graduate students, and bioinformatics analysts. Her lab members work on diverse projects spanning statistical method development, population genetic analyses, and psychiatric genetics research. She is actively recruiting for postdoctoral positions to lead research projects in statistical and population genomics across diverse human populations.