Karen Eilbeck

Karen Eilbeck is Professor of Biomedical Informatics and Adjunct Associate Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Utah, where she directs a bioinformatics research lab focused on precision medicine and genomic data management.

Education

• B.S., University of Salford, United Kingdom
• Ph.D., University of Manchester, United Kingdom

Research Interests

The Eilbeck lab leverages computer science and ontology engineering to address contemporary questions in genomics and molecular biology. Central themes include:

• Development of ontologies such as the Sequence Ontology (SO) and Non-Coding RNA Ontology (NCRO) to standardize and structure biological data.
• Design of ontology-enabled software tools that enhance data sharing, variant interpretation, and precision medicine workflows.
• Metagenomic pathogen detection, clinical genome interpretation, and integration of multi-omics datasets to advance personalized healthcare.

Publication Trends

Recent publications (2023-2025) emphasize AI-driven clinical decision support, standardized genomic terminology, and large-scale infectious-disease risk modeling. Earlier works (2005-2018) established foundational ontologies and data formats (GVF, VCF) now widely adopted by the genomics community.

Contact & Resources

• Email: keilbeck@genetics.utah.edu
• Lab website: available via University of Utah Department of Biomedical Informatics
• Full publication list: PubMed search | Google Scholar