Abhishek Vishnu

Abhi is epidemiologist with focus on application of genetics in improving population health. He is currently pursuing a postdoctoral fellowship in Personalized Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. His research interests have focused on examining race/ethnic differences in cardiometabolic diseases, including diabetes, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease. While he has focused on differences in subclinical cardiovascular disease markers between East Asian and US populations in the past, he is passionate about exploring genetic determinants of disparities in cardiometabolic diseases and outcomes between European, African and Asian ancestral groups during his postdoctoral training.

Abhi completed his medical degree from Seth G S Medical College, KEM Hospital, Mumbai, and worked as a physician in New Delhi. He moved to the US in 2009 to pursue Masters in Public health and went on to complete a PhD in Epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh. Here, he got expertise on some of the subclinical cardiovascular disease markers working closely with the Ultrasound Research Lab at Pitt.

Abhi has previously shown that traditional definition of metabolic syndrome does not capture the disease as well among non-European groups, especially African-American women, who are susceptible to rapid progression of metabolic severity around the menopause, but have lower severity based on traditionally accepted levels of triglycerides. At Mount Sinai, Abhi is closely examining different obesity phenotypes in the UK Biobank as well as examining genetic aspects of various anthropometric traits in the PAGE project.”