Home / Dr. Priyanka Baloni
Dr. Priyanka Baloni is an Assistant Professor in the School of Health Sciences and a faculty member of the Purdue Institute for Integrative Neuroscience at Purdue University. She earned her Ph.D. from the prestigious Indian Institute of Science, India, and got her postdoctoral training at the Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle, under the mentorship of Drs. Leroy Hood and Nathan Price. Dr. Baloni has led computational efforts in several large, coordinated projects involving diverse research teams and managing heterogeneous experimental data types in the field of biomedical health sciences. Her expertise spans a wide spectrum of systems biology approaches and multi-omics analyses, including genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, and proteomics that lead to biomarker discovery. Dr. Baloni is also committed to establishing a computational toxicology program in the School of Health Sciences.
Dr. Baloni's groundbreaking work has resulted in the generation of human brain region-specific metabolic networks, offering invaluable insights into the impact of metabolic alterations in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Actively associated with the NIH Accelerating Medicines Partnership – Alzheimer's Disease (AMP-AD) program, she strives to identify potential therapeutic targets in AD. Her work on studying altered bile acids and sphingolipid metabolism in AD has led to drug repositioning and filing of patents. Beyond neurodegenerative diseases, Dr. Baloni's contributions extend to diverse fields, including cancer, SARS-CoV2 infection, aging interventions, and pregnancy complications. Dr. Baloni has received extramural funds from NIH. She was an MPI for NICHD grant and currently serving as a co-Investigator in NIA and NIDDK funded projects. She has co-authored publications with faculties at IUSM to investigate the use of multi-omics data and identify potential metabolic targets for AD treatment. She has integrated genomics data with computational tools to identify gene variants associated with disease pathology. At the Baloni lab, her focus is on developing cutting-edge computational approaches to analyze multi-omics data and integrating them with models to identify biomarkers in neurodegenerative diseases and other health-related outcomes.
Dr. Baloni’s research focus centers on analyzing clinical, genomics and other omics data to offer insights and solutions for implementing precision medicine approaches. The ability to access genomic sequence data from large cohort combined with electronic health records (EHR) will provide her the platform for predicting the genetic risk for diseases and the longitudinal HER records can significantly improve the understanding of disease mechanisms, outcomes, and the effectiveness of treatments across diverse populations. The AnalytixIN life sciences health data asset provides a valuable platform for partnering on this translational effort. Her translational research focuses on transforming big data to knowledge for understanding molecular complexity in various health-related conditions and providing insights for potential therapeutic interventions, which will hugely benefit from industry partnerships.
Assistant Research Professor, University of Notre Dame Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society
Research Scientist, IU Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering
Chief Data Officer in Residence, Applied Analytics and Emerging Technology Lab at University of Notre Dame