Academic Profiles
Charleen D Adams
Research Fellows

Charleen D Adams

Research Fellow

Environmental Health

cdadams@hsph.harvard.edu

Links

Overview

SUMMARY

Public-health geneticist and molecular epidemiologist with 17 years designing and executing a wide range of epidemiological studies in humans. Presently a research fellow in the Nadeau lab in Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Experience in biotech, government, academia, and consulting (offering R&D guidance for an aging-research start-up and surveillance for the State of Washington). Multidisciplinary training applied at three cancer-research centers: National Cancer Institute, Fred Hutch, and City of Hope. Tech savvy: proficiency in R, bash, advanced causal-inference methods, and applied statistical genetics; bioinformatics tools and Python employed on an ad-hoc basis. Teaching experience in genomics, writing, and rhetoric at three universities. Committed mentor to more-junior scientists and enthusiastic science communicator and writer. Particular expertise in integrative, molecular approaches for mechanistic insights that can provide evidence for or against clinical trials. Comfortable harnessing new biological technologies, such as the latest omics. Visionary with ideas for identifying those susceptible to disease years in advance and for predicting biomarkers of treatment response (vs prognosis) in patients. Lifelong dedication to saving and improving lives.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Biomedical Research: 3 cancer-research centers, 3 governmental agencies, & 4 universities.
• Teaching Experience: 3 universities.
• Data Science & Translational Research: Applied statistical genetics & molecular epidemiology.
• Machine Learning: Prediction & novel biomarker discovery.
• Main Epidemiological Content Areas: cancer, aging, metabolic, neuroscience, chronic disease, reproductive, & integrative.
• Coding Skills: R, command line, & high-performance computing (HPC).
• Consulting: State of Washington's Newborn Screening Program (surveillance) & a biotech start-up (R&D guidance).

Principal Scientist / Consultant, 11/2023, Causal inference with proteomics
Teal Omics, Cambridge, MA

BA, 2000, Speech pathology & audiology
Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ

MA-TESL, 2002, Applied linguistics
Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ

MPH, 2012, Genetic epidemiology
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD

Predoc, 2013, Clinical genetics
National Cancer Institute, Division of Cancer Epidemiology & Genetics, Rockville, MD

PhD, 2016, Public-health genetics (epigenetics & bioethics)
University of Washington & Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA

Postdoc, 2018, Mendelian randomization
University of Bristol, Integrative Epidemiology Unit, Bristol, England

Postdoc, 2020, Cancer bioinformatics
City of Hope Cancer Center, Los Angeles, CA

Lead Scientist for SEED & Postdoc for MIPS, Current, Machine learning for reproductive epidemiology & aging
Harvard University, Boston, MA

Bibliography

Maternal anxiety during pregnancy and newborn epigenome-wide DNA methylation.

Sammallahti S, Cortes Hidalgo AP, Tuominen S, Malmberg A, Mulder RH, Brunst KJ, Alemany S, McBride NS, Yousefi P, Heiss JA, McRae N, Page CM, Jin J, Pesce G, Caramaschi D, Rifas-Shiman SL, Koen N, Adams CD, Magnus MC, Baïz N, Ratanatharathorn A, Czamara D, Håberg SE, Colicino E, Baccarelli AA, Cardenas A, DeMeo DL, Lawlor DA, Relton CL, Felix JF, van IJzendoorn MH, Bakermans-Kranenburg MJ, Kajantie E, Räikkönen K, Sunyer J, Sharp GC, Houtepen LC, Nohr EA, Sørensen TIA, Téllez-Rojo MM, Wright RO, Annesi-Maesano I, Wright J, Hivert MF, Wright RJ, Zar HJ, Stein DJ, London SJ, Cecil CAM, Tiemeier H, Lahti J.

Mol Psychiatry. 2021 06. 26(6):1832-1845. PMID: 33414500