Sambhawa Priya, Ph.D.
I am a Duchossois Family Institute (DFI) Chicago Fellow and postdoctoral associate in Dr. Ran Blekhman's lab at the University of Chicago. My research focuses on leveraging microbiome, genomics, and longitudinal clinical data to understand host–microbiome interactions that shape human health and disease. I develop scalable machine learning and multi-omics integration approaches to characterize how these interactions drive disease risk and clinical outcomes.
As part of my doctoral research, I developed a machine learning framework to systematically characterize host–microbiome interactions by integrating gut microbial profiles with host gene expression across colorectal cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, and irritable bowel syndrome, enabling the identification of shared and disease-specific host–microbe signatures.
News
- May, 2026 I'll be presenting at the Biology of Genomes conference at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY.
- Jun, 2025 Review on genomics of host-microbiome interactions in humans is published in Nature Reviews Genetics!
- Oct, 2025 Paper on how HIV and its therapies shape the gut microbiome is out now in Nature Microbiology!
- Sep, 2024 I've been awarded a Duchossois Family Institute (DFI) Chicago Fellowship at the University of Chicago to develop machine learning approaches for integrating clinical and microbiome data.
Selected Publications
See full list on the Publications page or Google Scholar.
