Mete Civelek, Ph.D.
About
Mete Civelek uses big data analytics to understand the molecular pathways of disease and develops personalized medicine approaches to cardiovascular and metabolic disorders. He is an assistant professor of Biomedical Engineering and a resident faculty at the Center for Public Health Genomics at the University of Virginia. After completing his postdoctoral fellowship in cardiovascular genetics in the laboratory of Jake Lusis at the University of California, Los Angeles, he joined UVA faculty in 2016.
His laboratory studies the complex interactions among genes and environment that increase our risk for heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Although diet, physical activity, and smoking affect our disease risk our genetic makeup play an equally important role. In the last ten years we learnt more about the genes that affect our disease risk than the previous 50 years thanks to technological advances in genome sequencing. But for majority of the genes we still do not know how they affect the development of heart disease or type 2 diabetes. His laboratory takes a holistic approach by carefully studying various human populations to connect the dots between genes and disease. They use data science, systems biology, and traditional molecular biology approaches to discover novel disease pathways in human cells and in mice. Their ultimate goal is to develop new therapies customized to individual heart disease or type 2 diabetes patients.
Dr. Civelek is the recipient of the NIH Pathway to Independence Award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute as well as Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award from Oak Ridge Associated Universities.
Education
B.S. Bogazici University, 1998
M.S. The Pennsylvania State University, 2000
Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, 2009
Post-Doc University of California, Los Angeles, 2015
We study how the genes we inherit from our parents affect heart disease and type 2 diabetes risk with a goal of developing new therapies customized to the individual.