Alexander S. Hatoum, PhD

Washington University in St. Louis (WU)

my goal is to leverage biological (particularly biostatistical) data to redefine nosologies to increase power and translate biostatistical data into meaningful clinical outcomes. I have two broad areas of interest. First, I hope to expand genetic approaches with other biological domains and discover treatment pathways. To achieve this, I apply whole-brain MRI metrics (structural and connectivity-based) and developmental models in genetically informative samples (twin and GWAS). Most recently, I have been integrating various statistical techniques I developed for imaging genetics with machine learning, attempting to find more robust prediction of psychiatric conditions that are also theoretically grounded in the etiology of psychiatric disorders, and can be tied to risk-factors or pharmacological treatments. Second, while each substance use disorder (SUD) is often treated as a discrete category, polysubstance use patterns are the norm amongst those suffering from addiction. It is likely that shared etiological pathways form the basis comorbidity.