I co-lead the Torgerson-Hernandez Lab (THeLab) along with Dr. Ryan Hernandez at UCSF. Our group is focused on developing computational approaches to study the interplay between human evolutionary history and environmental contributions to complex disease in the context of genetic ancestry. My background is in population genetics and bioinformatics, and I have specific expertise in integrative genomic and metabolomic studies of respiratory disease in diverse human populations.

I lead an interdisciplinary group of microbiome researchers committed to understanding host-associated microbes, reducing these complex microbial ecologies to molecular mechanism, and applying these lessons to improve the practice of medicine. Our three major topics of interest right now are pharmacology, nutrition, and phage biology. While we love sequencing and gnotobiotic mice, our work is question-driven not limited to a specific approach.

Microglia are emerging as critical regulators of brain homeostasis with an expanding array of functions beyond their established roles as immune sentinels such as synaptic remodeling, neuronal excitability, and myelin plasticity. These highly dynamic cells continuously monitor their microenvironment for alterations, and distinct populations and activation states have been identified based on brain anatomical location, sex, and age.