Brunilda Balliu

Assistant Professor, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of California Los Angeles

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Balliu Lab

Dr Balliu is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine and Computational Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She obtained a BSc. in Statistics from the Athens University of Economics and Business in Greece and a Ph.D. in Statistical Genetics from the Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Jeanine Houwing-Duistermaat and Stefan Boehringer. She did her postdoctoral research at Stanford University with Stephen Montgomery, focusing on methods to understand the role of inherited variation on molecular and complex traits. She joined UCLA in 2018 as an Independent Fellow in the Department of Computational Medicine and later as a faculty in the Departments of Pathology and Computational Medicine.

Interests

complex traits, single cell RNA-Seq, statistical methods, electronic health records, gene regulation, wearable devices

Education and Training

Stanford UniversityPostdoc09/2018Genetics
Leiden UniversityPhD09/2015Statistical Genetics
Athens University of Economics and BusinessB.Sc06/2010Statistics

Publications

  1. Caggiano C, Boudaie A, Shemirani R, Mefford J, Petter E, Chiu A, Ercelen D, He R, Tward D, Paul KC, Chang TS, Pasaniuc B, Kenny EE, Shortt JA, Gignoux CR, Balliu B, Arboleda VA, Belbin G, Zaitlen N. Disease risk and healthcare utilization among ancestrally diverse groups in the Los Angeles region.. Nature medicine, 2023.
  2. Garske KM, Kar A, Comenho C, Balliu B, Pan DZ, Bhagat YV, Rosenberg G, Koka A, Das SS, Miao Z, Sinsheimer JS, Kaprio J, Pietiläinen KH, Pajukanta P. Increased body mass index is linked to systemic inflammation through altered chromatin co-accessibility in human preadipocytes.. Nature communications, 2023.
  3. Deshpande D, Chhugani K, Chang Y, Karlsberg A, Loeffler C, Zhang J, Muszynska A, Munteanu V, Yang H, Rotman J, Tao L, Balliu B, Tseng E, Eskin E, Zhao F, Mohammadi P, P Labaj P, Mangul S. RNA-seq data science: From raw data to effective interpretation.. Frontiers in genetics, 2023.
  4. Johnson R, Ding Y, Venkateswaran V, Bhattacharya A, Boulier K, Chiu A, Knyazev S, Schwarz T, Freund M, Zhan L, Burch KS, Caggiano C, Hill B, Rakocz N, Balliu B, Denny CT, Sul JH, Zaitlen N, Arboleda VA, Halperin E, Sankararaman S, Butte MJ, UCLA Precision Health Data Discovery Repository Working Group, UCLA Precision Health ATLAS Working G, Lajonchere C, Geschwind DH, Pasaniuc B. Author Correction: Leveraging genomic diversity for discovery in an electronic health record linked biobank: the UCLA ATLAS Community Health Initiative.. Genome medicine, 2022.
  5. Thompson M, Gordon MG, Lu A, Tandon A, Halperin E, Gusev A, Ye CJ, Balliu B, Zaitlen N. Multi-context genetic modeling of transcriptional regulation resolves novel disease loci.. Nature communications, 2022.
  6. Johnson R, Ding Y, Venkateswaran V, Bhattacharya A, Boulier K, Chiu A, Knyazev S, Schwarz T, Freund M, Zhan L, Burch KS, Caggiano C, Hill B, Rakocz N, Balliu B, Denny CT, Sul JH, Zaitlen N, Arboleda VA, Halperin E, Sankararaman S, Butte MJ, UCLA Precision Health Data Discovery Repository Working Group, UCLA Precision Health ATLAS Working G, Lajonchere C, Geschwind DH, Pasaniuc B. Leveraging genomic diversity for discovery in an electronic health record linked biobank: the UCLA ATLAS Community Health Initiative.. Genome medicine, 2022.
  7. Perez RK, Gordon MG, Subramaniam M, Kim MC, Hartoularos GC, Targ S, Sun Y, Ogorodnikov A, Bueno R, Lu A, Thompson M, Rappoport N, Dahl A, Lanata CM, Matloubian M, Maliskova L, Kwek SS, Li T, Slyper M, Waldman J, Dionne D, Rozenblatt-Rosen O, Fong L, Dall'Era M, Balliu B, Regev A, Yazdany J, Criswell LA, Zaitlen N, Ye CJ. Single-cell RNA-seq reveals cell type-specific molecular and genetic associations to lupus.. Science (New York, N.Y.), 2022.
  8. Gloudemans MJ, Balliu B, Nachun D, Schnurr TM, Durrant MG, Ingelsson E, Wabitsch M, Quertermous T, Montgomery SB, Knowles JW, Carcamo-Orive I. Integration of genetic colocalizations with physiological and pharmacological perturbations identifies cardiometabolic disease genes.. Genome medicine, 2022.
  9. Briscoe L, Balliu B, Sankararaman S, Halperin E, Garud NR. Evaluating supervised and unsupervised background noise correction in human gut microbiome data.. PLoS computational biology, 2022.
  10. Balliu B, Carcamo-Orive I, Gloudemans MJ, Nachun DC, Durrant MG, Gazal S, Park CY, Knowles DA, Wabitsch M, Quertermous T, Knowles JW, Montgomery SB. An integrated approach to identify environmental modulators of genetic risk factors for complex traits.. American journal of human genetics, 2021.
  11. Alser M, Rotman J, Deshpande D, Taraszka K, Shi H, Baykal PI, Yang HT, Xue V, Knyazev S, Singer BD, Balliu B, Koslicki D, Skums P, Zelikovsky A, Alkan C, Mutlu O, Mangul S. Technology dictates algorithms: recent developments in read alignment.. Genome biology, 2021.
  12. Temple WC, Vo KT, Matthay KK, Balliu B, Coleman C, Michlitsch J, Phelps A, Behr S, Zapala MA. Association of image-defined risk factors with clinical features, histopathology, and outcomes in neuroblastoma.. Cancer medicine, 2020.
  13. Goodman-Meza D, Rudas A, Chiang JN, Adamson PC, Ebinger J, Sun N, Botting P, Fulcher JA, Saab FG, Brook R, Eskin E, An U, Kordi M, Jew B, Balliu B, Chen Z, Hill BL, Rahmani E, Halperin E, Manuel V. A machine learning algorithm to increase COVID-19 inpatient diagnostic capacity.. PloS one, 2020.
  14. Gay NR, Gloudemans M, Antonio ML, Abell NS, Balliu B, Park Y, Martin AR, Musharoff S, Rao AS, Aguet F, Barbeira AN, Bonazzola R, Hormozdiari F, GTEx Consortium, Ardlie KG, Brown CD, Im HK, Lappalainen T, Wen X, Montgomery SB. Impact of admixture and ancestry on eQTL analysis and GWAS colocalization in GTEx.. Genome biology, 2020.
  15. Oliva M, Muñoz-Aguirre M, Kim-Hellmuth S, Wucher V, Gewirtz ADH, Cotter DJ, Parsana P, Kasela S, Balliu B, Viñuela A, Castel SE, Mohammadi P, Aguet F, Zou Y, Khramtsova EA, Skol AD, Garrido-Martín D, Reverter F, Brown A, Evans P, Gamazon ER, Payne A, Bonazzola R, Barbeira AN, Hamel AR, Martinez-Perez A, Soria JM, GTEx Consortium, Pierce BL, Stephens M, Eskin E, Dermitzakis ET, Segrè AV, Im HK, Engelhardt BE, Ardlie KG, Montgomery SB, Battle AJ, Lappalainen T, Guigó R, Stranger BE. The impact of sex on gene expression across human tissues.. Science (New York, N.Y.), 2020.
  16. Contrepois K, Wu S, Moneghetti KJ, Hornburg D, Ahadi S, Tsai MS, Metwally AA, Wei E, Lee-McMullen B, Quijada JV, Chen S, Christle JW, Ellenberger M, Balliu B, Taylor S, Durrant MG, Knowles DA, Choudhry H, Ashland M, Bahmani A, Enslen B, Amsallem M, Kobayashi Y, Avina M, Perelman D, Schüssler-Fiorenza Rose SM, Zhou W, Ashley EA, Montgomery SB, Chaib H, Haddad F, Snyder MP. Molecular Choreography of Acute Exercise.. Cell, 2020.
  17. Balliu B, Durrant M, Goede O, Abell N, Li X, Liu B, Gloudemans MJ, Cook NL, Smith KS, Knowles DA, Pala M, Cucca F, Schlessinger D, Jaiswal S, Sabatti C, Lind L, Ingelsson E, Montgomery SB. Genetic regulation of gene expression and splicing during a 10-year period of human aging.. Genome biology, 2019.
  18. Frésard L, Smail C, Ferraro NM, Teran NA, Li X, Smith KS, Bonner D, Kernohan KD, Marwaha S, Zappala Z, Balliu B, Davis JR, Liu B, Prybol CJ, Kohler JN, Zastrow DB, Reuter CM, Fisk DG, Grove ME, Davidson JM, Hartley T, Joshi R, Strober BJ, Utiramerur S, Undiagnosed Diseases Network, Care4Rare Canada Consortium, Lind L, Ingelsson E, Battle A, Bejerano G, Bernstein JA, Ashley EA, Boycott KM, Merker JD, Wheeler MT, Montgomery SB. Identification of rare-disease genes using blood transcriptome sequencing and large control cohorts.. Nature medicine, 2019.
  19. Liu B, Calton MA, Abell NS, Benchorin G, Gloudemans MJ, Chen M, Hu J, Li X, Balliu B, Bok D, Montgomery SB, Vollrath D. Genetic analyses of human fetal retinal pigment epithelium gene expression suggest ocular disease mechanisms.. Communications biology, 2019.
  20. Balliu B, Houwing-Duistermaat JJ, Böhringer S. Powerful testing via hierarchical linkage disequilibrium in haplotype association studies.. Biometrical journal. Biometrische Zeitschrift, 2019.
  21. Kraemer M, Huynh QB, Wieczorek D, Balliu B, Mikat B, Boehringer S. Distinctive facial features in idiopathic Moyamoya disease in Caucasians: a first systematic analysis.. PeerJ, 2018.
  22. Ferreira MA, Vonk JM, Baurecht H, Marenholz I, Tian C, Hoffman JD, Helmer Q, Tillander A, Ullemar V, van Dongen J, Lu Y, Rüschendorf F, Esparza-Gordillo J, Medway CW, Mountjoy E, Burrows K, Hummel O, Grosche S, Brumpton BM, Witte JS, Hottenga JJ, Willemsen G, Zheng J, Rodríguez E, Hotze M, Franke A, Revez JA, Beesley J, Matheson MC, Dharmage SC, Bain LM, Fritsche LG, Gabrielsen ME, Balliu B, 23andMe Research Team, AAGC collaborators, BIOS consortium, LifeLines Cohort Study, Nielsen JB, Zhou W, Hveem K, Langhammer A, Holmen OL, Løset M, Abecasis GR, Willer CJ, Arnold A, Homuth G, Schmidt CO, Thompson PJ, Martin NG, Duffy DL, Novak N, Schulz H, Karrasch S, Gieger C, Strauch K, Melles RB, Hinds DA, Hübner N, Weidinger S, Magnusson PKE, Jansen R, Jorgenson E, Lee YA, Boomsma DI, Almqvist C, Karlsson R, Koppelman GH, Paternoster L. Shared genetic origin of asthma, hay fever and eczema elucidates allergic disease biology.. Nature genetics, 2017.
  23. Tissier R, Uh HW, van den Akker E, Balliu B, Tsonaka S, Houwing-Duistermaat J. Gene coexpression network analysis for family studies based on a meta-analytic approach.. BMC proceedings, 2016.
  24. Kukurba KR, Parsana P, Balliu B, Smith KS, Zappala Z, Knowles DA, Favé MJ, Davis JR, Li X, Zhu X, Potash JB, Weissman MM, Shi J, Kundaje A, Levinson DF, Awadalla P, Mostafavi S, Battle A, Montgomery SB. Impact of the X Chromosome and sex on regulatory variation.. Genome research, 2016.
  25. Balliu B, Zaitlen N. A Novel Test for Detecting SNP-SNP Interactions in Case-Only Trio Studies.. Genetics, 2016.
  26. Balliu B, Tsonaka R, Boehringer S, Houwing-Duistermaat J. A retrospective likelihood approach for efficient integration of multiple omics factors in case-control association studies.. Genetic epidemiology, 2015.
  27. Balliu B, Würtz RP, Horsthemke B, Wieczorek D, Böhringer S. Classification and visualization based on derived image features: application to genetic syndromes.. PloS one, 2014.
  28. Chen H, Malzahn D, Balliu B, Li C, Bailey JN. Testing genetic association with rare and common variants in family data.. Genetic epidemiology, 2014.
  29. Balliu B, Uh HW, Tsonaka R, Boehringer S, Helmer Q, Houwing-Duistermaat JJ. Combining information from linkage and association mapping for next-generation sequencing longitudinal family data.. BMC proceedings, 2014.
  30. Huijts PE, Hollestelle A, Balliu B, Houwing-Duistermaat JJ, Meijers CM, Blom JC, Ozturk B, Krol-Warmerdam EM, Wijnen J, Berns EM, Martens JW, Seynaeve C, Kiemeney LA, van der Heijden HF, Tollenaar RA, Devilee P, van Asperen CJ. CHEK2*1100delC homozygosity in the Netherlands--prevalence and risk of breast and lung cancer.. European journal of human genetics : EJHG, 2013.
  31. Balliu B, Tsonaka R, van der Woude D, Boehringer S, Houwing-Duistermaat JJ. Combining family and twin data in association studies to estimate the noninherited maternal antigens effect.. Genetic epidemiology, 2012.