Elizabeth Cooper

Dr. Elizabeth Cooper is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Bioinformatics and Genomics at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte). She holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Southern California (2011) and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Miami and Clemson University. Her research focuses on leveraging '-omics' technologies to study genomic mechanisms underlying species adaptation, particularly in crop plants like sorghum and ecological systems such as mosquitoes and tropical birds. Dr. Cooper leads the Cooper Lab, which explores structural variations, gene expression dynamics, and evolutionary processes in plants and animals. She is affiliated with the NC Research Campus and teaches courses in genomics and computational biology.

Key research areas include: (1) genomic basis of complex traits in sorghum, focusing on sugar accumulation and structural mutations; (2) adaptation in Culex mosquitoes to climate change; and (3) evolutionary genomics of bird species. Her work integrates computational tools and statistical methods, such as population genetics and association mapping.

Dr. Cooper’s lab has developed resources like the Sorghum bicolor reference genome and collaborates on projects involving genome-wide association studies and transcriptomics. She actively contributes to open-science initiatives, including the JGI Plant Gene Atlas and RepBox toolbox for repetitive element analysis.