Dennis Lal

Dennis Lal holds the position of Associate Professor and serves as the Director of the Center for Neurogenetics at UTHealth Houston. His academic journey encompasses a Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry, a Master's degree in Genetics, and a Ph.D. in Neurogenetics, all of which he obtained with honors from the University of Cologne in Germany. Driven by his passion for cutting-edge research, he delved into postdoctoral training in quantitative Epilepsy genetics, first at the University of Cologne and later at the prestigious Broad Institute of Harvard, M.I.T., and Massachusetts General Hospital in the USA. Throughout his postdoctoral work, his primary focus remained on Statistical genetics and Computational biology. Dr. Lal has published ~120 publications on the genomics of brain disorders and the development of bioinformatic methods. Dr. Lal leads both genomic data analysis working groups in the two largest international epilepsy genetics consortia. He is also the senior author on several large (N>1000) genetic association studies, including the largest CNV and polygenic risk studies in epilepsy to date, with each ~18,000 participants. Dr. Lal has published many bioinformatic methods and web resources guiding the interpretation and the prediction of the function of genetic variants. He will co-lead the genetic risk factors and polygenic risks for AD/ADRD in ReCARDO’s work streams and contribute to the testing and validation of biomarker CDEs.