Summary
Joseph Grzymski, Ph.D., is the Chief Genomics Officer of Renown Health, the Director of the Renown Institute for Health Innovation, and a faculty member in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Nevada Reno, School of Medicine in the fields of Computational Biology and Genetics. He has been responsible for expanding Renown Health's basic and clinical research portfolio and since 2016 has received funding over $60m from a variety of federal, state, and private sector sources forming the largest public-private research partnership in Nevada. Dr. Grzymski conceived of the Healthy Nevada Project and now leads a diverse team of geneticists, data scientists, programmers, engineers, clinicians, and doctors as a part of the Renown Institute for Health Innovation and within the School of Medicine.
The Healthy Nevada Project (HNP) is a population genetics study that has enrolled, consented and collected DNA and other health determinants data from more than 50,000 participants throughout Nevada. There are three major goals for the HNP: 1) to improve population health; 2) to increase biomedical research and development infrastructure in Nevada; and, 3) a prevention strategy using genetics to detect inherited disease risks for conditions that, if detected early, lower mortality and morbidity. This risk assessment is poorly ascertained in the current clinical setting.
The HNP is currently returning results of CDC Tier 1 conditions while focusing research efforts on lifestyle diseases such as cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, diabetes, liver disease, and addiction. Dr. Grzymski is the PI of a Liver Disease genetics study and non-invasive fibrosis diagnostic study in the US sponsored by Gilead Sciences. At Renown Health, Dr. Grzymski developed and leads this large collaborative 7-year engagement with Gilead. And, has worked on many aspects of the business, legal, and scientific relationships with pharmaceutical partners, transforming Renown Health into a population genetics research medical center. He is also the PI of an NIH R01 grant focusing on gene x environment interactions.
Dr. Grzymski and his team have helped transform Northern Nevada into a hotspot of population health due to the Healthy Nevada Project and an array of high-impact papers. He works closely with the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control on population genomics best practices. Dr. Grzymski received his PhD from Rutgers University, was a postdoc at Rockefeller University, was a Fulbright Scholar and is a proud graduate of Bowdoin College.
Education
- Ph.D. Rutgers University, Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences
- B.A. Bowdoin College, Departments of Biology and Philosophy