Current Position
Associate Professor, Geisinger Medical Center (2025-present)
Previous Positions
Crawford Graduate Student (2009-2014)
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Human Genetics, University of Michigan (2014-2017)
Bioinformatics Staff Scientist, Autism & Developmental Medicine Institute (ADMI), Geisinger Health System (2017-2019)
Assistant Professor, Geisinger Medical Center (2020-2025)
Research Interests
Matt's graduate research was focused on the utilization of an EMR-linked biorepository for pharmacogenetic studies on a wide range of drugs including clopidogrel, warfarin, calcineurin-inhibitors, and statins. Matt's current research interests include the genetics of drug efficacy and adverse drug response, data-mining clinical data from electronic medical records, functional variation in pharmacogenes, and phenome-wide association studies. Matt's research skills include the design of pharmacogenomic studies in an EMR-based biobank, genetic analysis of SNP data and rare variants, and experience with large datasets.
Recent Publications
- Tan, T, Jayashankar, H, Guan, J, Nehzati, SM, Mir, M, Bennett, M, Agerbo, E, Ahlskog, R, Pinto de Andrade Anapaz, V, Asvold, BO et al.. Family-GWAS reveals effects of environment and mating on genetic associations. medRxiv 2025; : . PubMed PMID:41282763 PubMed Central PMC12633112.
- Jensen, M, Smolen, C, Tyryshkina, A, Pizzo, L, Sun, J, Noss, S, Banerjee, D, Oetjens, M, Shimelis, H, Taylor, CM et al.. Genetic modifiers and ascertainment drive variable expressivity of complex disorders. Cell 2025; : . PubMed PMID:41061703 PubMed Central PMC12614355.
- Finucane, BM, Myers, SM, Ledbetter, DH, Martin, CL, Oetjens, MT. Apples, Oranges, and Biobanks: Ascertainment Bias in Population-Based Studies of Neurodevelopmental Psychiatric Disorders. Am J Med Genet B Neuropsychiatr Genet 2025; 198 (7): 73-75. PubMed PMID:40439075 PubMed Central PMC12354158.
- Berry, ASF, Finucane, BM, Myers, SM, Martin, CL, Ledbetter, DH, Willard, HF, Oetjens, MT. X and Y gene dosage effects are primary contributors to human sexual dimorphism: The case of height. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2025; 122 (22): e2503039122. PubMed PMID:40388606 PubMed Central PMC12146736.
- Mitchel, MW, Oetjens, M, Berry, ASF, Johns, A, Moreno-De-Luca, A, Torene, RI, Strande, NT, DiStefano, MT, Dyer, LH, Brandt, T et al.. Monogenic disorders associated with motor speech phenotypes in children and adolescents undergoing clinical exome sequencing. Genet Med 2025; 27 (4): 101374. PubMed PMID:39931922 PubMed Central PMC11985296.
- Weng, LC, Rämö, JT, Jurgens, SJ, Khurshid, S, Chaffin, M, Hall, AW, Morrill, VN, Wang, X, Nauffal, V, Sun, YV et al.. The impact of common and rare genetic variants on bradyarrhythmia development. Nat Genet 2025; 57 (1): 53-64. PubMed PMID:39747593 PubMed Central PMC11735381.
- Berry, ASF, Finucane, BM, Myers, SM, Walsh, LK, Seibert, JM, Martin, CL, Ledbetter, DH, Oetjens, MT. A genome-first study of sex chromosome aneuploidies provides evidence of Y chromosome dosage effects on autism risk. Nat Commun 2024; 15 (1): 8897. PubMed PMID:39406744 PubMed Central PMC11480344.
- Dunn, ME, Kithcart, A, Kim, JH, Ho, AJ, Franklin, MC, Romero Hernandez, A, de Hoon, J, Botermans, W, Meyer, J, Jin, X et al.. Agonist antibody to guanylate cyclase receptor NPR1 regulates vascular tone. Nature 2024; 633 (8030): 654-661. PubMed PMID:39261724 PubMed Central PMC11410649.
- Jensen, M, Smolen, C, Tyryshkina, A, Pizzo, L, Banerjee, D, Oetjens, M, Shimelis, H, Taylor, CM, Pounraja, VK, Song, H et al.. Genetic modifiers and ascertainment drive variable expressivity of complex disorders. medRxiv 2024; : . PubMed PMID:39252907 PubMed Central PMC11383473.
- Weng, LC, Khurshid, S, Hall, AW, Nauffal, V, Morrill, VN, Sun, YV, Rämö, JT, Beer, D, Lee, S, Nadkarni, G et al.. Meta-Analysis of Genome-Wide Association Studies Reveals Genetic Mechanisms of Supraventricular Arrhythmias. Circ Genom Precis Med 2024; 17 (3): e004320. PubMed PMID:38804128 PubMed Central PMC11187659.