DANA C. CRAWFORD, PHD
Associate Director for Population and Diversity Research
Dana Crawford, PhD, is Professor in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences and Associate Director for Population and Diversity Research in the Cleveland Institute for Computational Biology. She also has a secondary appointment in the Department of Genetics and Genome Sciences. Dr. Crawford received her Ph.D. at Emory University in genetics and molecular biology in 2000 and then trained as a post-doctoral fellow as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2000–2002) and as a senior fellow at the University of Washington’s Department of Genome Sciences (2002–2006). Prior to her most current position, Dr. Crawford spent eight years as tenure-track faculty in the Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics and Investigator in the Center for Human Genetics Research at Vanderbilt University. As a genetic epidemiologist at CWRU, Dr. Crawford’s broad research interests include applying genetic variation data to large-scale epidemiologic and clinical cohorts to better understand human genotype-phenotype associations with an emphasis on diverse populations.
Recent Publications
- Chen, F, Madduri, RK, Rodriguez, AA, Darst, BF, Chou, A, Sheng, X, Wang, A, Shen, J, Saunders, EJ, Rhie, SK et al.. Evidence of Novel Susceptibility Variants for Prostate Cancer and a Multiancestry Polygenic Risk Score Associated with Aggressive Disease in Men of African Ancestry. Eur Urol 2023; : . PubMed PMID:36872133 .
- Waksmunski, AR, Kinzy, TG, Cruz, LA, Nealon, CL, Halladay, CW, Anthony, SA, Greenberg, PB, Sullivan, JM, Wu, WC, Iyengar, SK et al.. Diversity is key for cross-ancestry transferability of glaucoma genetic risk scores in Hispanic Veterans in the Million Veteran Program. Pac Symp Biocomput 2023; 28 : 413-424. PubMed PMID:36540996 PubMed Central PMC9997528.
- Liu, J, Nair, V, Zhao, YY, Chang, DY, Limonte, C, Bansal, N, Fermin, D, Eichinger, F, Tanner, EC, Bellovich, KA et al.. Multi-Scalar Data Integration Links Glomerular Angiopoietin-Tie Signaling Pathway Activation With Progression of Diabetic Kidney Disease. Diabetes 2022; 71 (12): 2664-2676. PubMed PMID:36331122 PubMed Central PMC9750948.
- Yang, HT, Crawford, DC, Abazeed, ME. Editorial: Translating clinical genomics and health informatics into precision oncology. Front Genet 2022; 13 : 1029212. PubMed PMID:36263433 PubMed Central PMC9574329.
- Lutnick, B, Manthey, D, Becker, JU, Ginley, B, Moos, K, Zuckerman, JE, Rodrigues, L, Gallan, AJ, Barisoni, L, Alpers, CE et al.. A user-friendly tool for cloud-based whole slide image segmentation with examples from renal histopathology. Commun Med (Lond) 2022; 2 : 105. PubMed PMID:35996627 PubMed Central PMC9391340.
- Liu, S, Bush, WS, Miskimen, K, Gonzalez-Vicente, A, Bailey, JNC, Konidari, I, McCauley, JL, Sedor, JR, O'Toole, JF, Crawford, DC et al.. T-cell receptor diversity in minimal change disease in the NEPTUNE study. Pediatr Nephrol 2023; 38 (4): 1115-1126. PubMed PMID:35943576 .
- Waksmunski, AR, Kinzy, TG, Cruz, LA, Nealon, CL, Halladay, CW, Simpson, P, Canania, RL, Anthony, SA, Roncone, DP, Sawicki Rogers, L et al.. Glaucoma Genetic Risk Scores in the Million Veteran Program. Ophthalmology 2022; 129 (11): 1263-1274. PubMed PMID:35718050 PubMed Central PMC9997524.
- Verma, A, Tsao, NL, Thomann, LO, Ho, YL, Iyengar, SK, Luoh, SW, Carr, R, Crawford, DC, Efird, JT, Huffman, JE et al.. A Phenome-Wide Association Study of genes associated with COVID-19 severity reveals shared genetics with complex diseases in the Million Veteran Program. PLoS Genet 2022; 18 (4): e1010113. PubMed PMID:35482673 PubMed Central PMC9049369.
- Menon, R, Bomback, AS, Lake, BB, Stutzke, C, Grewenow, SM, Menez, S, D'Agati, VD, Jain, S, Kidney Precision Medicine Project. Integrated single-cell sequencing and histopathological analyses reveal diverse injury and repair responses in a participant with acute kidney injury: a clinical-molecular-pathologic correlation. Kidney Int 2022; 101 (6): 1116-1125. PubMed PMID:35339536 PubMed Central PMC9769136.
- Peloso, GM, Tcheandjieu, C, McGeary, JE, Posner, DC, Ho, YL, Zhou, JJ, Hilliard, AT, Joseph, J, O'Donnell, CJ, Efird, JT et al.. Genetic Loci Associated With COVID-19 Positivity and Hospitalization in White, Black, and Hispanic Veterans of the VA Million Veteran Program. Front Genet 2021; 12 : 777076. PubMed PMID:35222515 PubMed Central PMC8864634.
Featured Publications

Investigating the relationship between mitochondrial genetic variation and cardiovascular-related traits to develop a framework for mitochondrial phenome-wide association studies.
Mitchell SL, Hall JB, Goodloe RJ, Boston J, Farber-Eger E, Pendergrass SA, Bush WS, Crawford DC,. Mitochondria play a critical role in the cell and have DNA independent of the nuclear genome. There is much evidence that mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) variation plays a role in human health and disease, however, this area of investigation has […]

Pleiotropic associations of risk variants identified for other cancers with lung cancer risk: the PAGE and TRICL consortia.
Park SL, Fesinmeyer MD, Timofeeva M, Caberto CP, Kocarnik JM, Han Y, Love SA, Young A, Dumitrescu L, Lin Y, Goodloe R, Wilkens LR, Hindorff L, Fowke JH, Carty C, Buyske S, Schumacher FR, Butler A, Dilks H, Deelman E, Cote ML, Chen W, Pande M, Christiani DC, Field JK, Bickebller H, Risch A, Heinrich […]

Pleiotropic effects of genetic risk variants for other cancers on colorectal cancer risk: PAGE, GECCO and CCFR consortia.
Cheng I, Kocarnik JM, Dumitrescu L, Lindor NM, Chang-Claude J, Avery CL, Caberto CP, Love SA, Slattery ML, Chan AT, Baron JA, Hindorff LA, Park SL, Schumacher FR, Hoffmeister M, Kraft P, Butler AM, Duggan DJ, Hou L, Carlson CS, Monroe KR, Lin Y, Carty CL, Mann S, Ma J, Giovannucci EL, Fuchs CS, Newcomb […]

Utilization of an EMR-biorepository to identify the genetic predictors of calcineurin-inhibitor toxicity in heart transplant recipients.
Oetjens M, Bush WS, Birdwell KA, Dilks HH, Bowton EA, Denny JC, Wilke RA, Roden DM, Crawford DC,. Calcineurin-inhibitors CI are immunosuppressive agents prescribed to patients after solid organ transplant to prevent rejection. Although these drugs have been transformative for allograft survival, long-term use is complicated by side effects including nephrotoxicity. Given the narrow therapeutic […]