Welcome to the Davis Lab!
Our current research spans many domains of medicine and psychiatry, ranging from neurodevelopmental disorders to women’s health. We employ a population level approach to investigate the genetic basis of a wide range of complex health conditions, diseases, and common traits.

What we do in the Davis Lab
In the Davis Lab, we are interested in the genomics of a wide range of complex phenotypes. For most complex traits, much of the genetic liability is distributed throughout the genome and therefore each individual single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) explains a very small proportion of the phenotypic variance (i.e., heritability) observed through traditional twin and family-based methods. While the contribution of each individual variant is small, for many complex or “polygenic” traits, the cumulative effect of these contributory common SNPs is substantial. Additionally, complex traits are also influenced by rare genetic variants, and environmental factors. Our research aims to understand how polygenic risk, rare variant risk, and environment interact to result in complex traits. We study a wide range of traits including psychiatric and endocrine phenotypes and are particularly interested in understanding the genetics underlying the richness of neurodiversity in human populations.
Latest News in the Davis Lab!
- 2025/05/09 - Happy graduation Matthew! Matthew will be starting his PhD study in human genetics at Baylor!
- 2025/05/01 - Congratulations Ellen for winning first place in the Sinai DNA day poster competition!
- 2025/04/02 - Congratulations Dr. Allie Lake for winning the P.E.O. International Scholar Award!
- 2025/02/13 - Congratulations Dr. Allie Lake for an amazing dissertation presentation! We are so proud of you!
- 2024/10/30 - Allie and Ky'Era's paper on trauma and genetic risk is now published on JAMA Psychiatry
- 2024/07/29 - Tyne's paper "Developing a phenotype risk score for tic disorders in a large, clinical biobank" is now on Translational Psychiatry!
