Astrid Engel, PhD

Associate Professor

Phone
504.988.6316
LCRC 815
Astrid Engel, PhD

Education & Affiliations

PhD, Louisiana State University
Licenciatura, University of Costa Rica

Biography

Dr. Engel's research focuses on the impact of mobile element activity on human health, in particular the human transposable elements (TEs), L1, and alu elements. Her main goal is to investigate the mechanism by which transposable elements contribute to disease and how environmental factors, such as heavy metal exposure, contribute to TE-mediated genomic instability and disease. Dr. Engel uses ex-vivo studies and the state-of-the-art whole-genome next-generation sequencing (NGS) approaches to investigate the contribution of mobile elements to human diseases such as cancer.  Dr. Engel is the course director of the graduate courses human molecular genetics and molecular epidemiology and the undergraduate course public health genomics. In addition, Dr. Engel serves on several editorial boards and is the editor-in-chief of Genetics.

Research Areas

  • Mobile elements and genetic instability
  • Heavy metal exposure
  • DNA repair

Honors & Awards

  • Editor in Chief, Meta Gene
  • Executive Editor, Gene
  • Editorial Board, Mobile DNA

Publications

View Dr. Engel's publication at her NCBI profile page.

Courses

SPHU 3170 Foundations of Epidemiology
SPHU 3890 Service Learning
SPHU 4340 Public Health Genomics
EPID 6320 Molecular Epidemiology
EPID 6090 Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases
EPID 7810 EPID 7810 Human Molecular Genetics