He became interested in genes involved in alcohol metabolism, and cloned several alcohol dehydrogenase genes (ADHs).
This led to an interest in alcoholism and other complex genetic diseases, and in applying genomics to understand them
My research focuses on the genetics and genomics of complex genetic disorders, especially alcohol and other substance use disorders. It spans interrelated areas that extend from genome-wide searches for genes affecting the risk for disease to molecular studies of the mechanisms by which associated variants affect gene expression, and from studies of the regulation of individual genes to genome-wide studies of expression using RNAseq and ATAC-seq, and includes the development of high throughput assays to identify functional elements in the genome
