Angela Garcia will be talking about her research at this CEMinar. Her research focuses on how social adversity impacts health disparities and disease risk. She uses life history framework and a multilevel systems biology approach to explore interactions between genetics, transcriptomics, cortisol, immune markers, perceptions, and behavior in order to understand the physiology of disparities in health within and between populations. Her current projects are focused on evaluating the links between social adversity, endocrine-immune signaling, and metabolic and cognitive health among Honduran immigrants on the island of Utila, and the Tsimane and Moseten of Bolivia. Specifically, she is investigating the effects of changing social and ecological milieu on metabolic and cognitive risk through how parasitic infection moderates social influences on the expression of genes (mRNA) related to stress and inflammation.

She holds a PhD in biological anthropology from the University of California Santa Barbara, and is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at Arizona State University in the Center for Evolution and Medicine, working with Ben Trumble and Ken Buetow.