Dr. Carlos Cruchaga is a Professor at Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM) in Saint Louis with appointments at the departments of psychiatry, neurology and genetics. He is also the director of WUSM’s NeuroGenomics and Informatics Center and the Hope Center DNA and RNA core. Dr. Cruchaga’s research goal is to leverage genetics, multi-omics and functional genomics studies in neurodegeneration and diseases of the central nervous system and translate those into improvements in human health through better understanding of the molecular underpinnings of disease. His lab has pioneered combining next-generation sequencing technology with data on biomarkers and quantitative traits to identify functional variants implicated in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Currently his research is focused on using a range of ‘omic data (genomic, proteomic, metabolomics and lipidomics, among others) to understand the biology of neurodegenerative diseases, identify causal genes and proteins, and create novel molecular prediction models and druggable targets.