Katherine Pollard

Senior investigator and director, Convergence Zone, Gladstone Institutes; professor of biostatistics, UC San Francisco; Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator
Katie_Pollard

Katherine Pollard

Senior investigator and director, Convergence Zone, Gladstone Institutes; professor of biostatistics, UC San Francisco; Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator

Biography

Using bioinformatics and modeling, Katie Pollard studies the human microbiome—the genes present within the microbes in our bodies—to determine the effect microbes have on conditions varying from autoimmune disorders to body mass to mental health.

Pollard earned a Ph.D. in biostatistics from the University of California, Berkeley, where she developed statistical methods to analyze microarray data in cancer biology. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at UC Santa Cruz, during which she discovered rapidly evolving regions in the human genome that might be clues to human origins. After serving as an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis, Pollard joined Gladstone as an associate investigator in 2008. She has received several awards, including the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship and the Sloan Research Fellowship. She is also a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences.

Sessions as a Speaker