Julia Knox

I am a first-year DPhil student in Sociology at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science. My main research interests are the study design and statistical methods development of genome-wide association studies (GWAS). I am interested in the long-term impact of the reference genome and the race-as-biology myth on precision medicine and precision public health. My other interests include exposure to environmental mixtures and transgenerational epigenetics. 

My DPhil project is supported by the Leverhulme Trust Doctoral Scholarship Programme.

My research focuses on bias in the GWAS pipeline, from SNP selection to defining variables for statistical analysis. For example, I am interested in how framing allele associations with racial categories can obstruct the finding of important, and unexpected, associations.

Prior to beginning my DPhil studies, I worked as a Data Scientist for Rotunda Solutions, an engineering firm based in Springfield, Virginia. Before that, I spent several years in the Laboratory of Precision Environmental Science at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, where I also studied Narrative Medicine in the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics. I hold a Master’s degree in Public Health.