Saez-Rodriguez Group

Systems Biomedicine

Rebecca Terrall Levinson

Visiting PostdocI am a geneticist and biomedical informatician. During my doctoral work in Human Genetics at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN, I began to explore using electronic health records (EHR) as a data source for genetic and clinical studies. My dissertation focused on the potential and limitations of phenome-wide approaches in the EHR. After receiving my PhD in 2016, I transitioned to an appointment in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center where I was a fellow on the American Heart Association Strategic Focused Research Network project there. My research focus was on identifying cardiovascular and metabolic phenotypes in the EHR and using them for downstream analyses to understand disease heterogeneity in clinical data. In 2019, I joined the Schultz group in General Internal Medicine and Psychosomatics in collaboration with the Saez-Rodriguez group at UniversitätsKlinikum Heidelberg as part of the Informatics for Life consortium. My work will focus on understanding comorbidities of heart failure through clinical data analysis and integration with omics data sources.

Research Interests

My research interests are related to understanding the genetic and phenotypic heterogeneity of cardiovascular diseases in the electronic health record (EHR). I am interested in using a variety of computational methods to identify patients with a disease (such as heart failure) and disease comorbidities, with the goal of understanding how these comorbidities influence disease trajectory, quality of life, and potential treatment. A secondary research interest is understanding how methods of phenotype identification and extraction may impact the heterogeneity of disease that can be identified from clinical data sources.

Professional Career

2019-Present: Postdoctoral Researcher, Schultz Group, General Internal Medicine and Psychosomatics, UniversitätsKlinikum Heidelberg, Saez-Rodriguez Group, Institute for Computational Biomedicine, Heidelberg, Germany
2017-2019: Postdoctoral Fellow, Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN USA
2010-2011: Laboratory Assistant, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN USA

Education

2012-2016: PhD Human Genetics, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN USA
2006-2010: B.S. Biology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH USA
2006-2010: B.A. Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH USA