Dr. Katie Marker lives in Salt Lake City and is a postdoctoral researcher in the Ilardo Lab. She earned her MPH in Epidemiology/Biostatistics from UC Berkeley, where she conducted breast cancer research in Peruvian women, examining genetic risk factors of breast cancer subtypes. This early work sparked her interest in the intersection of genetics, ancestry, and health in underrepresented populations. She then completed her PhD in Human Medical Genetics and Genomics at the University of Colorado Anschutz, where her research integrated genetic epidemiology and statistical genetics to investigate complex traits and disease risk across diverse populations, with a primary focus on fine-scale population structure bias in rare variant analyses.
Before graduate school, Katie worked with public health non-profits and international youth programs in Latin America, supporting scientific capacity building and youth development. She also spent time in industry, on the research team of a large genomics company. Her current research explores human evolution and adaptation in Latin American populations historically excluded from genetic studies, with the goal of translating evolutionary insights into a better understanding of health phenotypes.
Outside of work, she enjoys skiing, backpacking, paddleboarding, yoga, and reading.