Chaojie Yang was awarded an American Heart Association (AHA) Predoctoral Fellowship in April 2021. Chaojie is a fourth-year graduate student in Dr. Ani Manichaikul’s lab who is pursuing training in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics. His current research projects involve leveraging multi-omics data including transcriptomics, proteomics and methylation from TOPMed MESA to understand the biological pathways and mechanisms the drive Coronary Artery Disease (CAD). He is also working on genome-wide association studies (GWAS) for multiple phenotypes including fatty acid, stroke and COPD in diverse ancestry groups, with a focus on European, African American, Hispanics and Chinese populations within the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA). In the context of his work, Chaojie is also applying post-GWAS approaches such as fine-mapping to identify the putative causal variants as well as colocalization analysis and TWAS to identify trait-related biomarkers. Chaojie has a strong commitment to improving public health through his research, statistical background and programming skills and is motivated to make meaningful contributions toward identifying biological pathways in complex diseases. Chaojie’s career goal is to become a leading statistical geneticist either in an academic research laboratory or in a comparable industry-based or non-profit research institution in the field of public health. He wants to focus on the development of new computational and statistical analysis algorithms to enable a deeper understanding of biological mechanisms for complex diseases.