Richard OPPONG

Office(s): Longitudinal Studies Section (LSS)

Email Address: richard.oppong2@nih.gov

Biography

Dr. Oppong received his Ph.D. in Evolutionary Biology from the University of Edinburgh, UK in 2019, working in the lab of Dr. Sara Knott. His Ph.D. research involved implementing various statistical models such linear mixed effects models and Bayesian mixture models to explore the genetic architecture of complex traits in humans. He further explored a novel analytical approach that utilized a genomic relationship matrix that is based on natural haplotype blocks delimited by recombination hotspots in the genome to perform regional GREML analysis. He joined the Longitudinal Studies Section of the Translational Gerontology Branch (TGB) in 2019, where he is co-supervised by Dr. Jun Ding (Facility Head of the Statistical Genetics Unit) and Dr. Luigi Ferrucci (the Scientific Director of NIA). His research is now centered on the analysis of whole-genome sequence data from human aging cohorts such as BLSA, SardiNIA and GESTALT, with particular focus on mitochondrial DNA analysis.