Karina Banasik

Karina Banasik is an Associate Professor at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research (CPR) at the University of Copenhagen, where she leads research in the Brunak Group. She also holds a visiting professor position at the same institution. Her work focuses on genomic data analysis and precision medicine applications.

Dr. Banasik earned her PhD in health sciences in 2013 from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Metabolic Research at the University of Copenhagen. Following her doctoral studies, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at the University of Oxford (2013-2015), where she specialized in genetic and genomic epidemiology related to type 2 diabetes. During this time, she co-developed TOPPAR, a customizable database-driven browser for GWAS results.

Her research interests include genomic variation, common complex diseases, pharmacogenomics, data integration, and tool development. Dr. Banasik has extensive experience analyzing large biomedical datasets and specializes in quality control and association analyses of whole-genome genotyping data. She has contributed to major research consortia including GoT2D, DIRECT, RHAPSODY, and FOREVER.

Analysis of her recent publications reveals a strong focus on genome-wide association studies across multiple disease areas including dermatological conditions, cardiovascular disease, inflammatory bowel disease, infertility, pharmacogenomics, long COVID, and cancer. Her work consistently emphasizes translational applications of genomic findings to improve precision medicine approaches.

Dr. Banasik is actively involved in developing research infrastructure, including infrastructure design and tool development, and is dedicated to training multidisciplinary students and collaborators. She participates in major international consortia, public-private partnerships, and Danish national biobank collaborations including The Danish Blood Donor Study and the Copenhagen Hospital Biobank.