Jennifer (Piper) Below, PhD, professor of Medicine in the Division of Genetic Medicine, has been named director of the Vanderbilt Genetics Institute (VGI).
Effective April 1, Below, who holds the Robert A. Goodwin, Jr., MD Directorship in Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, will succeed founding Institute Director Nancy Cox, PhD, the Mary Phillips Edmonds Gray Professor of Medicine. Cox is an internationally known geneticist who also served as the former director of the Division of Genetic Medicine. The current division director, Alexander Bick, MD, PhD, associate professor of Medicine, succeeded Cox in that role in 2024.
Established in 2015 upon Cox’s arrival from the University of Chicago, the VGI is the intellectual hub for genomics research at VUMC and Vanderbilt University. It has facilitated interactions between more than 100 faculty members with expertise in genetics, genomics and the molecular sciences.
“The Institute is a recognized leader in genetics and home to many of this country’s most respected basic and translational investigators dedicated to understanding the genetic basis of disease,” said Jennifer Pietenpol, PhD, Chief Scientific and Strategy Officer and Executive Vice President for Research at VUMC.
“Dr. Below’s leadership will be key to achieving the Institute’s mission of improving disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment while mentoring the next generation of genomic scientists,” Pietenpol said. “We are excited about the vision, expertise and energy she will bring to this pivotal role.”
Pietenpol credited Cox with achieving VGI’s significant research growth and impact during the past 10 years.
“In addition,” she said, “Nancy’s leadership has been instrumental in advancing personalized health by creating and leveraging unique resources, including the BioVU biobank and global genomic partnerships, to drive transformative discoveries in human health.”
Cox’s career has focused on developing novel quantitative genetic methods to identify and characterize genetic variations contributing to common human diseases and related complex traits, including diabetes, psychiatric disorders and pharmacogenomics.
She initiated the first large-scale genetic/genomic consortium in Type 2 diabetes with Mike Boehnke, PhD, of the University of Michigan, and her lab was among the first to provide evidence that common variant associations to common human diseases and complex human traits appear to be largely regulatory in function.
The Cox lab also developed approaches for predicting gene expression levels from genetic variation. She has an active research program in data integration, particularly in integrating functional genomic information to aid in discovering and interpreting associations of genome variation with common and rare diseases, particularly in the context of electronic health records data, such as VUMC has with BioVU.
“I am so excited to be passing my leadership roles on to such stellar and energetic faculty. Piper has extensive experience in international consortia, so she is already well known internationally, and her recent studies collecting and analyzing multiomics data collected at multiple time points will position the VGI particularly well to accomplish pioneering work in these areas,” Cox said.
“I have complete confidence in her leadership and will be excited to watch the next chapter of the VGI unfold. She has brilliant and extraordinarily productive faculty in the VGI to aid her in taking the VGI to the next level as the nexus for human genetics, genomics and related multiomics research here at Vanderbilt.”
An innovator in medical education, in 2017 Cox also became the founding director of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine’s master’s degree program in genetic counseling. The program has since graduated numerous students who are now working as geneticists in a variety of settings.
Named a Pritzker Scholar at the University of Chicago in 2012, Cox is a former editor of the journal Genetic Epidemiology. In 2015 she was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She was the 2023 ASHG Leadership Award recipient from the American Society of Human Genetics. She is also a past president of this organization.
Below’s lab develops and applies computational methods to advance the understanding of the genetic and epigenetic basis of human disease.
Specifically, she focuses on the development of novel strategies for identifying and confirming genetic risk factors for a wide range of familial and complex traits, including cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, speech and language traits, oral and tooth traits, and infectious diseases via ascertainment of dense genetic, transcriptomic and phenotypic data.
She is particularly interested in the bioinformatics methods involved in network analysis of related individuals, genomic segments shared identical by descent, large-scale meta-analyses, and genetically derived predictions of expression in large electronic health record databases linked to DNA databanks, such as VUMC’s BioVU biobank, All of Us and the UK Biobank.
Below also works with numerous large-scale datasets with specific focus on populations that experience gaps in medical access, health outcomes and have been historically left out of genetic studies. In addition, she is a member of the Vanderbilt Brain Institute and analyzes dense genomic data in admixed populations to improve understanding of dementia risk.
Below is a mentor for the James Carter Scholars Program, a training program that promotes career development of students from Meharry Medical College, and the Human Genetics Scholars Initiative of the American Society of Human Genetics, providing mentorship for investigators in genetics.
She also leverages her expertise in social media and communications to facilitate mass online science outreach and serves on the communications committees for several major genetics’ societies. She was a 2020 Vanderbilt University Chancellor Faculty Fellow and currently serves as principal investigator of six NIH-funded R01grants.
As the new director of the VGI, Below is charged with leading the institute into its next decade of innovation, fostering multidisciplinary collaboration, advancing genomic discovery and building on its international reputation for excellence.
Said Pietenpol: “Our continued investments in the VGI will benefit the research community both within and beyond Vanderbilt, promote better diagnosis, treatment and prevention of human disease for all people, and will lead the world in advances to precision health through leading-edge genetics research and studies of the expressed genome that leverage the most phenotypically rich biobank globally.”
