VIPBG News

By Elizabeth Long

Tim Bigdeli, Ph.D. is a post-doctoral fellow at Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics. His interests in psychiatric genetics began while he was completing his undergraduate degree in biology, where he became fascinated by the diversity of life and how genetics can tell a story about human populations and evolution. He was then exposed to world of psychiatric genetics while he was working on his PhD in Human and Molecular Genetics, also at Virginia Commonwealth University, and developed a strong interest in the genetics of schizophrenia. After completing his PhD, he obtained his current post-doctoral position at VIPBG studying schizophrenia, and has been “happily GWAS’ing ever since.“

Specifically, Dr. Bigdeli is interested in schizophrenia because it is highly heterogeneous and highly genetic. His current research examines the question of whether genetic factors underlie clinical heterogeneity. Also, because schizophrenia is one of the most heritable complex traits, Dr. Bigdeli believes we can learn from our study of it and use what we learn to inform the study of other less heritable traits. In addition to schizophrenia, Dr. Bigdeli’s other research interests include genetic risk factors for bipolar disorder and major depression.

Outside of research, Dr. Bigdeli enjoys playing the guitar and spending time with his cats Bixler and Baden.