Na Gao

Na Gao serves as an Adjunct Instructor in the Department of Foreign Languages within the College of Humanities and Sciences at Virginia Commonwealth University, specializing in Chinese language instruction. Despite her humanities appointment, she maintains an active research program in statistical genetics and breast cancer, evidenced by 50+ publications from 2021-2024 in high-impact journals.

Her research focuses on:

• Developing cross-ancestry polygenic risk scores for breast cancer in African ancestry populations
• Multi-tissue transcriptome-wide association studies (TWAS) for breast cancer subtypes
• Statistical methods for genetic association testing in family samples
• Integrating expression and splicing data for cancer gene discovery
• Addressing health disparities in genomic medicine

Analysis of her 15 most recent publications reveals consistent innovation in statistical genetics methodology, particularly for improving risk prediction models in underrepresented populations. Her work demonstrates exceptional integration of multi-omics data across tissues, with significant contributions to identifying 235+ breast cancer susceptibility genes and advancing ancestry-inclusive precision oncology.