Shaila Musharoff

Dr. Shaila Musharoff is a statistical and population geneticist studying human disease architecture. Shaila uses population genetic approaches to assess how demographic and cultural factors, such as admixture and assortative mating, affect patterns of genetic and phenotypic variation. Shaila uses these insights to develop statistical methods to interrogate disease and predict traits in human populations, with the goal of incorporating environmental and other trait-relevant information. Current projects in the lab include investigating the extent to which gene-by-environment interactions drive disease risk, accounting for genetic and environmental heterogeneity when estimating heritability in biobank-scale population samples, and estimating the extent of socially-induced assortative mating in human populations. 

Shaila joined the Cornell Department of Computational Biology in January 2023. Previously, Shaila earned a Ph.D. in Genetics advised by Dr. Carlos Bustamante at Stanford University, and then completed Postdoctoral positions with Dr. Noah Zaitlen at UCSF and Dr. Jonathan Pritchard at Stanford University.