Leyao Wang, PhD, MPH

Leyao Wang, PhD, MPH

Assistant Professor of Medicine, School of Medicine

Professor Wang studies asthma origins and etiology. She has been leading a collaborative birth cohort in Puerto Rico after the devastating Hurricane Maria (Sept. 20, 2017). This cohort focuses on infants who were exposed in utero to the hurricane and aim to evaluate impact of specific prenatal exposures on the infant gut microbial community. The hypothesis is that the infant gut microbiome is the major mechanism underlying the association between prenatal adverse exposures and increased disease risks, such as asthma. In addition, the Wang Lab has applied multiple genome and airway microbiome analysis methods into population-based asthma studies to understand the genetic and bacterial architecture of asthma endotypes.