Mariaelisa Graff
Mariaelisa Graff is a genetic epidemiologist whose research focuses on the genetic architecture of obesity, body composition, and cardiometabolic traits across ancestrally diverse populations. She is a leading contributor to large-scale genome-wide association studies through major consortia including GIANT, PAGE, TOPMed, and HCHS/SOL, with particular emphasis on ensuring that genomic discovery reflects the full spectrum of human diversity.
Her work spans several interconnected themes: identifying novel genetic loci for anthropometric traits such as BMI, waist-hip ratio, and height; characterizing gene-environment interactions with physical activity, diet, smoking, and sleep; characterizing genetic risk, and applying multi-omics approaches — including metabolomics, epigenomics, and transcriptomics — to understand the biological mechanisms underlying obesity and related conditions. She has made sustained contributions to the study of severe obesity, lipid biology, and cardiometabolic disease risk in all populations.
Her role in these collaborative studies and consortia are twofold. She has expertise in large scale computation and plays a lead role in these groups as a genetic epidemiologist. She also provides scientific guidance and leadership within the consortia and also at UNCCH, as part of the CVD genetic epidemiology computational laboratory. She leads the development, execution, and application of analytic pipelines for high-dimensional molecular data.