Elizabeth Litkowski

Research Fellow

ellitkow@umich.edu

Liz Litkowski is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Kaczorowski Lab who returned to graduate school after a diverse background in technology businesses.  She holds a B.S. in Mathematics and an MBA which enabled her to hold roles in businesses as varied as electronic component supply chain distribution to oil/gas drilling before moving to work with theoretical statisticians.  Upon returning to school, she completed an MS degree in Biostatistics evaluating gene networks perturbed by ethanol exposure in a LXS mouse panel to identify potential targets for treating alcohol addiction.  In her PhD in genetic Epidemiology, she studied the genetic risk between diabetes and dementia in the Million Veteran Program (MVP), a large biobank of U.S Veterans with clinical and genotype data. 

Using a technique called Mendelian randomization, she found evidence of causality between diabetes and dementia in MVP.  In her postdoctoral research, she is pursuing the next step of the diabetes-dementia link through analysis of glucose tolerance with cognitive impairment in a gene by diet study in a mouse panel intended to emulate human diversity.