Muralidharan Sargurupremraj, Ph.D.

Muralidharan SARGURUPREMRAJ, Ph.D., is a geneticist with both statistical and molecular biology experience. Dr. Sargurupremraj obtained his Master’s in “Molecular genetics” at the University of Leicester, UK and his doctoral on “statistical genetics” from the Technical University of Munich, Germany. Following his post-doctoral work studying the genetic epidemiology of cerebral small vessel disorders, cognitive traits and dementia at the University of Bordeaux, France, he is currently working as an Assistant professor at the Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer's & Neurodegenerative Diseases and the Department of Population Health Science of UTHSA where he is a member of the Population Neuroscience Core of the Biggs Institute.

He is experienced in generating primary genetic association evidence for complex neurological, neurodegenerative diseases and their various endophenotypes (white matter hyperintensities, brain infarcts, memory performance, etc.). His specific interest is in studying the vascular contribution to Alzheimer’s disease – a common form of dementia that often co-exists with cerebrovascular disease. He is involved in the systematic exploration for biological pleiotropy and causal inference using instrumental variable methods with a specific focus on gene prioritization strategies for augmenting the performance of disease-risk prediction that is based on common genetic variants. Dr. Sargurupremraj is also experienced in the application of multi-omics data to infer cell/tissue type specificity in cerebral small vessel disease (cSVD) both at the bulk and single-cell resolution.

His renewed interest is in studying gene-environment interaction by involving epigenetic information and a specific class of genetic elements that transpose in the genome particularly in relation to the magnetic resonance imaging markers for cSVD and atrophy.