Marylyn D. Ritchie, PhD, FACMI
Principal Investigator
Director, Center for Translational Bioinformatics, Institute for Biomedical Informatics
Director, Institute for Biomedical Informatics
Professor with tenure, Department of Genetics
Edward Rose, M.D. and Elizabeth Kirk Rose, M.D. Professor
Director, Division of Informatics, Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Informatics
University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine
Vice President, Research Informatics, University of Pennsylvania Health System
A301 Richards Building
3700 Hamilton Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Curriculum Vitae Google Scholar
Marylyn D. Ritchie, PhD is a Professor with tenure in the Department of Genetics, Director of the Center for Translational Bioinformatics, Director for the Institute for Biomedical Informatics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Dr. Ritchie is also Director for the Division of Informatics, Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Informatics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Vice President for Research Informatics at the University of Pennsylvania Health System. Dr. Ritchie is a translational bioinformatics scientist, biomedical informatician, and computational human geneticist with a focus on developing novel approaches for understanding the relationship between our genome and human phenotypes. She has expertise in developing novel bioinformatics tools for complex analysis of big data in genetics, genomics, and clinical databases, in particular in the area of Pharmacogenomics. Some of her methods include Multifactor Dimensionality Reduction (MDR), the Analysis Tool for Heritable and Environmental Network Associations (ATHENA), and the Biosoftware suite for annotating/ filtering variants and genomic regions as well as building models of biological relevance for gene-gene interactions and rare-variant burden/dispersion tests. Dr. Ritchie has over 15 years of experience in the analysis of complex data and has authored over 300 publications. Dr. Ritchie has received several awards and honors including selection as a Genome Technology Rising Young Investigator in 2006, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow in 2010, a KAVLI Frontiers of Science fellow by the National Academy of Science from 2011-2014, and she was named one of the most highly cited researchers in her field by Thomas Reuters in 2014. Dr. Ritchie has extensive experience in all aspects of genetic epidemiology and translational bioinformatics as it relates to human genomics. She also has extensive expertise in dealing with big data and complex analysis including GWAS, next-generation sequencing, data integration of meta-dimensional omics data, Phenome-wide Association Studies (PheWAS), and development of data visualization approaches.
Education
1999, BS University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown (Biology)
2002, MS Vanderbilt University (Applied Statistics)
2004, PhD Vanderbilt University (Statistical Genetics)
Honors and Awards
1999 Graduated Summa Cum Laude, University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown
2000- 2002 NIH Breast Cancer Research Training Grant
2001 Vanderbilt University, Charles R. Park Student Travel Award
2002- 2003 NLM Bioinformatics Training Grant
2002 Vanderbilt University Graduate School Travel Grant
2003 Vanderbilt University Dissertation Enhancement Grant
2003 Vanderbilt University Graduate School Travel Grant
2003 Vanderbilt University, Charles R. Park Student Travel Award
2004 Best Paper Award, Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference
2006 Genome Technology, Rising Young Investigator Award
2010 Sloan Research Fellow
2011-2014 KAVLI Frontiers in Science Fellow, National Academy of Science
2014 Member, Thomas Reuters, Most Highly Cited Researchers
2015 Paul Berg Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Penn State University
2016 E. Allen Deaver, High Potential Leadership Fellow, Geisinger Health System
2017 First Place, AMIA “Why Informatics” Video Contest
2020 Group on Information Resources (GIR) Excellence Award, American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC)
– for our team’s PennChart Genomics Project
2020 Elected as a fellow in the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI)
2021 Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) fellow
2021 Elected into the National Academy of Medicine (NAM)
2022 Edward Rose, M.D. and Elizabeth Kirk Rose, M.D. Professor, University of Pennsylvania, Perelman School of Medicine
Memberships in Professional Societies
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG)
International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB)
American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA)
American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI)
National Academy of Medicine (NAM)
Major Research Interests
Computational Genomics Genetic Epidemiology
Translational Bioinformatics Statistical Genetics
Epistasis Systems Genomics
Pharmacogenomics Computational Biology
Big Data Biomedical Informatics
Evolutionary Computation Cardiovascular Disease