Lucas A Salas

Lucas A Salas, MD, MPH, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine and an Investigator in the Cancer Population Sciences Research Program at Dartmouth Cancer Center. He holds an MD from Universidad Nacional de Colombia (2001), an MPH from Universitat Pompeu Fabra (2011), and a PhD from Universitat Pompeu Fabra (2015). His research integrates bioinformatics and molecular epidemiology to study epigenetic mechanisms in cancer, immune dysregulation, and developmental exposures.

Dr. Salas leads two major NIH/DoD-funded projects: (1) Epigenetic modifications of cytosines in clear cell kidney carcinogenesis (DoD CDMRP, 2020-2024) and (2) Single-cell analysis of tumor microenvironments in renal carcinoma survivors (NIGMS, 2020-2023). His lab develops computational tools like HiTIMED (tumor deconvolution) and FlowSorted.Blood.EPIC for cell-type resolution.

His publications predominantly explore cancer epigenomics, including ovarian/renal carcinoma disparities, immune checkpoint therapy biomarkers, and glioma microenvironments. Recent work demonstrates strong emphasis on DNA methylation-based prognostic models and spatial transcriptomics methodologies.

He mentors doctoral students in Quantitative Biomedical Sciences (QBS) and Molecular & Cellular Biology (MCB), with current advisees including Chinaza Nnam, Minghui Zhang, and Hannah Stolrow. Former trainees hold positions in academia and industry.