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
- Ferar, K, Hall, TO, Crawford, DC, Rowley, R, Satterfield, BA, Li, R, Gragert, L, Karlson, EW, de Andrade, M, Kullo, IJ et al.. Author Correction: Genetic variation in the human leukocyte antigen region confers susceptibility to Clostridioides difficile infection. Sci Rep 2023; 13 (1): 19972. PubMed PMID:37968452 PubMed Central PMC10652012.
- Wang, A, Shen, J, Rodriguez, AA, Saunders, EJ, Chen, F, Janivara, R, Darst, BF, Sheng, X, Xu, Y, Chou, AJ et al.. Characterizing prostate cancer risk through multi-ancestry genome-wide discovery of 187 novel risk variants. Nat Genet 2023; : . PubMed PMID:37945903 .
- Ferar, K, Hall, TO, Crawford, DC, Rowley, R, Satterfield, BA, Li, R, Gragert, L, Karlson, EW, de Andrade, M, Kullo, IJ et al.. Genetic variation in the human leukocyte antigen region confers susceptibility to Clostridioides difficile infection. Sci Rep 2023; 13 (1): 18532. PubMed PMID:37898691 PubMed Central PMC10613277.
- Darst, BF, Shen, J, Madduri, RK, Rodriguez, AA, Xiao, Y, Sheng, X, Saunders, EJ, Dadaev, T, Brook, MN, Hoffmann, TJ et al.. Evaluating approaches for constructing polygenic risk scores for prostate cancer in men of African and European ancestry. Am J Hum Genet 2023; 110 (7): 1200-1206. PubMed PMID:37311464 PubMed Central PMC10357473.
- Darst, BF, Shen, J, Madduri, RK, Rodriguez, AA, Xiao, Y, Sheng, X, Saunders, EJ, Dadaev, T, Brook, MN, Hoffmann, TJ et al.. Evaluating Approaches for Constructing Polygenic Risk Scores for Prostate Cancer in Men of African and European Ancestry. medRxiv 2023; : . PubMed PMID:37292833 PubMed Central PMC10246022.
- Drouet, DE, Liu, S, Crawford, DC. Assessment of multi-population polygenic risk scores for lipid traits in African Americans. PeerJ 2023; 11 : e14910. PubMed PMID:37214096 PubMed Central PMC10198155.
- Cruz, LA, Cooke Bailey, JN, Crawford, DC. Importance of Diversity in Precision Medicine: Generalizability of Genetic Associations Across Ancestry Groups Toward Better Identification of Disease Susceptibility Variants. Annu Rev Biomed Data Sci 2023; 6 : 339-356. PubMed PMID:37196357 .
- Nealon, CL, Halladay, CW, Gorman, BR, Simpson, P, Roncone, DP, Canania, RL, Anthony, SA, Sawicki Rogers, LR, Leber, JN, Dougherty, JM et al.. Association Between Fuchs Endothelial Corneal Dystrophy, Diabetes Mellitus, and Multimorbidity. Cornea 2023; 42 (9): 1140-1149. PubMed PMID:37170406 PubMed Central PMC10523841.
- 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; 84 (1): 13-21. PubMed PMID:36872133 PubMed Central PMC10424812.
- 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.
Featured Publications

Characterization of the Metabochip in diverse populations from the International HapMap Project in the Epidemiologic Architecture for Genes Linked to Environment (EAGLE) project.
Crawford DC, Goodloe R, Brown-Gentry K, Wilson S, Roberson J, Gillani NB, Ritchie MD, Dilks HH, Bush WS,. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified hundreds of genomic regions associated with common human disease and quantitative traits. A major research avenue for mature genotype-phenotype associations is the identification of the true risk or functional variant for […]

Enabling high-throughput genotype-phenotype associations in the Epidemiologic Architecture for Genes Linked to Environment (EAGLE) project as part of the Population Architecture using Genomics and Epidemiology (PAGE) study.
Bush WS, Boston J, Pendergrass SA, Dumitrescu L, Goodloe R, Brown-Gentry K, Wilson S, McClellan B, Torstenson E, Basford MA, Spencer KL, Ritchie MD, Crawford DC,. Genetic association studies have rapidly become a major tool for identifying the genetic basis of common human diseases. The advent of cost-effective genotyping coupled with large collections of samples […]