Dr. Patel is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School and is a leading expert in the field of exposomics. He is a NEXUS MPI and co-leads the NEXUS Data Science Hub alongside Marina Sirota, PhD, University of California, San Francisco. The Data Science Hub is focused on developing digital infrastructure to support the next generation of precision environmental health.
Dr. Patel trained in biomedical informatics at Stanford University. He also leads R01 applications from NIEHS, NIDDK, and NIA that focus on executing exposure-wide and genome-wide investigations in cardiovascular disease, diabetes, dementia and aging.
Currently, At Harvard Medical School, Dr. Patel leads a translational exposomics informatics group, mentors the next generation of data scientists, and teaches an introductory AI course that brings computation to real-world biomedical problems.
Historically, the Chirag Patel Group pioneered computational approaches to develop exposome-wide association studies (ExWAS), a ‘search engine’ for finding and confirming links between exposures and phenotypes.
Today, Dr. Patel’s team applies these methods to large surveys, electronic health records, biobanks, and global studies to pinpoint why conditions like dementia, diabetes, and cancer affect some communities more than others. Chirag Patel Group considers the exposome as an entity that impacts clinically relevant biological function through the integration of ‘omics and interventional studies, and applies meta‑science methods to boost exposomics’ reliability and secure its lasting impact.
Fun Fact: Prior to starting his PhD in bioinformatics at Stanford University, Chirag was a software engineer at Applied Biosystems, whose DNA sequencing technologies were critical in the Human Genome Project.