The Executive Committee of the Third Coast HIV-related Cardiovascular and Sleep Disorders Career Development Program congratulates Bohdan Khomtchouk, PhD for his appointment as a K12 scholar.

Khomtchouk is an instructor of medicine and bioinformatics specialist at the University of Chicago, and a faculty member of the Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology and the Third Coast Center for AIDS Research. His two-year project, “The Role of HIV Infection on Genetic Risk of Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) Among Women and Black Communities: A Mendelian Randomization Approach,” will utilize existing genetics and associated clinical datasets to develop new predictive models of HIV-associated cardiovascular disease incidence, with a focus on subclinical atherosclerosis, coronary artery disease (CAD), and heart failure (HF) diagnoses. The objective of this study will be to reveal the genetic architecture of HIV-associated atherosclerosis, CAD, and HF, and explore the causal links between HIV status and future CVD progression to facilitate novel target discovery for computationally-derived therapeutics in the setting of treated HIV infection. Dr. Khomtchouk’s overall research focus is to pioneer the emerging field of cardioinformatics by leveraging bioinformatics and computational biology approaches to illuminate novel cardio-(vascular/renal/metabolic) disease biology, with the goal of enabling new therapeutics and drug discovery.

With mentors, Drs. John Schneider at the University of Chicago and Matthew Feinstein at Northwestern University, Dr. Khomtchouk will also pursue additional advanced training in cardiovascular epidemiology, biostatistics, and AI/machine learning.

All K12 scholars participate in career development activities sponsored by the Third Coast Cardiovascular and Sleep Disorders Career Development Program, a multi-institution and cross-disciplinary initiative between the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (K12 HL143959). Congratulations to Dr. Khomtchouk on this outstanding achievement!

Bohdan Khomtchouk, PhD
Instructor of Medicine and Bioinformatics
Section of Computational Biomedicine and Biomedical Data Science
The University of Chicago