Brooke Nichole Wolford

Researcher

Current role and affiliations

Brooke Wolford is a postdoctoral fellow at the K.G. Jebsen Centre for Genetic Epidemiology in the NTNU Department of Public Health and Nursing. She is a statistical geneticist with a PhD in Bioinformatics and Master in Statistics from the University of Michigan. Originally from North Carolina, she received her B.S. in Quantitative Biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and trained at the National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.

Research interests and focus

Dr. Wolford is interested in the development of precision medicine approaches to prevent cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). She employs computational tools and statistical models to gain insights from electronic health record-linked biobanks with paired genetic data, such as the Trøndelag Health Study (HUNT). 

Her research focuses on improving disease prediction as well as discovery and characterization of disease-associated genetic variants.

Dr. Wolford is funded by the EU Horizon 2020 INTERVENE Consortium. She currently co-leads analysts across 7 European biobanks to harmonize phenotypic data, evaluate polygenic scores, and estimate lifetime risk across age and sex strata.

Selected publications

  • Clinical Implications of Identifying Pathogenic Variants in Individuals With Thoracic Aortic Dissection. 
    Wolford BN, Hornsby WE, Guo D, Zhou W, Lin M, Farhat L, McNamara J, Driscoll A, Wu X, Schmidt EM, Norton EL, Mathis MR, Ganesh SK, Douville NJ, Brummett CM, Kitzman J, Chen YE, Kim K, Deeb GM, Patel H, Eagle KA, Milewicz DM, J Willer C, Yang B. Circ Genom Precis Med. 2019 Jun;12(6):e002476. doi: 10.1161/CIRCGEN.118.002476. Epub 2019 Jun 18.
  • Discovery and systematic characterization of risk variants and genes for coronary artery disease in over a million participants
    Krishna G Aragam, Tao Jiang, Anuj Goel, Stavroula Kanoni, Brooke N Wolford, Deepak S Atri, Kristian Hveem, Adam S Butterworth et. al. Nat Genet. 2022 Dec;54(12):1803-1815. doi: 10.1038/s41588-022-01233-6. Epub 2022 Dec 6.

 

Published Mar. 18, 2024 11:25 AM - Last modified May 15, 2026 1:11 PM