Sharon Lutz

Dr. Sharon Lutz is an Associate Professor in the Department of Population Medicine with a secondary appointment in the Department of Biostatistics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Lutz received her MA in Mathematics from the University of Colorado at Boulder and her MA and PhD in Biostatistics from Harvard University. She completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Genomic Mathematics at the University of Bonn, Germany and the Department of Biostatistics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. 

Dr. Lutz's research interests include the theory and application of statistical methods for genetic and genomics. These methods are used to determine and understand the path from gene to disease and the role of the environment and sex using causal inference, mediation analysis, Mendelian randomization, machine learning, and computational statistics. Dr. Lutz’s methodological contributions include the development and evaluation of approaches for direct and indirect genetic effects, Mendelian randomization, screening steps for family-based studies, pleiotropy, ascertainment bias, gene by environment/sex interactions, and approaches to combine omics data. In addition, Dr. Lutz has either led or collaborated on several applications of statistical genetics and genomics methods for several traits including asthma, COPD, cigarette smoking, depression, mental health, maternal health, and Alzheimer’s disease. Currently, Dr. Lutz leads a NIMH R01 study focused on developing statistical methods to detect sex effects for common variants and polygenic effects in genetic association studies of depression.