Charleston Chiang, PhD

Charleston Chiang is Associate Professor in the Department of Population and Public Health Sciences at Keck School of Medicine, USC. He is the Associate Director for Center of Genetic Epidemiology, and also jointly affiliated with the Department of Quantitative and Computational Biology and Dornsife School of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, USC. Dr. Chiang is a medical population geneticist focused on understanding how the evolutionary forces, specifically demographic history and natural selection, shaped the genetic architecture of complex traits within and between human populations. To this end, he has led a number of large-scale genomic studies in humans to characterize the fine-scale population structure, to investigate signals of natural selection and adaptation, and to leverage these evolutionary insights to map the genetic loci underlying human complex traits. He is most interested in studying diverse populations with a unique history; projects in his group has included populations from Finland, China, Sardinia, as well as the Latino American and Native Hawaiian cohorts. Prior to his position at Center for Genetic Epidemiology, Dr. Chiang received his B.S. in Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics from University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Ph.D. in Genetics from Harvard University, and completed his postdoctoral training in Population Genetics and Human Genetics at UCLA. His current lab website can be found at http://chianglab.usc.edu

• Keck School of Medicine, USC: Dean’s Early Career Award for Excellence in Mentoring, 2024
• American Society of Human Genetics: ASHG Human Genetics and Genomics Advances Outstanding Early Career Publication Award, 2023
• American Society of Human Genetics: ASHG Charles J. Epstein Trainee Award for Excellence in Human Genetics Research Semi-finalist, 2017

• UCLA, Los Angeles, California — Postdoc — 11/2017 — Human Genetics and Population Genetics
• Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts — Ph.D. — 9/2011 — Genetics
• UCLA, Los Angeles, California — B.S. — 6/2005 — Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics

• A genome-wide genealogical framework for statistical and population genetic analysis
  NIH · R01HG012605 · Sep 1, 2023 – Jun 30, 2027 · Role: Principal Investigator
• Leveraging the Evolutionary History to Improve Identification of Trait-Associated Alleles and Risk Stratification Models in Native Hawaiians
  NIH · R01HG011646 · Sep 1, 2022 – Jun 30, 2027 · Role: Principal Investigator
• Leveraging the Evolutionary History to Improve Identification of Trait-Associated Alleles and Risk Stratification Models in Native Hawaiians
  NIH/NHGRI · R01HG011646 · Sep 1, 2022 – Jun 30, 2027 · Role: Principal Investigator
• An evolutionary framework to elucidate and interpret the genetic architecture of complex traits in diverse populations
  NIH · R35GM142783 · Aug 1, 2021 – May 31, 2026 · Role: Principal Investigator
• Using whole genomes to study demography and mapping power of a population isolate
  NIH · F32GM106656 · Apr 1, 2013 – Mar 31, 2015 · Role: Principal Investigator

• Human Genetics
• Population Genetics
• Genetic Epidemiology

• Haiman, Christopher
• Wiemels, Joseph
• Peters, Anne
• Gauderman, William
• Gazal, Steven
• Thompson, Paul