Jacob Williams, Ph.D.

Dr. Jacob Williams joined DCEG as a postdoctoral fellow in the Biostatistics Branch (BB) in July 2023. He earned his Ph.D. in statistics at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg and a B.S. in statistics at Montana State University, Bozeman. In his dissertation, Dr. Williams presented three different methods for Bayesian ultra-high dimensional variable selection for linear mixed models with applications to genome-wide association studies (GWAS).

In DCEG, Dr. Williams’s research goal is to improve the accuracy of polygenic risk scores (PRSs) by creating a method to combine PRSs from rare genomic variants with those from common genomic variants. His mentors are Haoyu Zhang, Ph.D., Stadman Investigator at the Biostatistics Branch, DCEG, and Xihao Li, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at the Department of Biostatistics, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.