People
Our lab works in statistical genetics, biostatistics, clinical research, and research software development at Michigan Medicine and the School of Public Health.
Mentoring in the lab
Get a sense of what it’s like to learn and work here. Read about mentoring in the Fritsche Lab, from individual conversations with Lars to lab meetings and learning from one another.
Current team
Lars Fritsche, PhD
Lab Head
Research Associate Professor of Anesthesiology and Biostatistics and a faculty member of the Chronic Pain & Fatigue Research Center
Lars works with collaborators to combine genetic, clinical, patient-reported, and mobile data in studies of treatment response and disease risk.
Ryan Welch, PhD
Application Programmer/Analyst Lead
Anesthesiology
Ryan uses genetic and molecular data to better understand complex human traits and improve clinical decision-making.
Sarah Fazal, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Anesthesiology
Sarah studies chronic overlapping pain conditions and nociplastic pain to understand patient heterogeneity and the biological mechanisms that distinguish patient subgroups.
Co-mentored by Lars Fritsche (primary mentor), Daniel Clauw, Andrew Schrepf, and Stephan Frangakis through U-M's HEAL PAIN T90/R90 program.
Shivalika Pathania, PhD
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Biostatistics
Shivalika applies statistical genetics and integrates genomic and electronic health record data to study complex disease risk.
Tai Yang, MS
Graduate Student Research Assistant (GSRA) and PhD Candidate
Biostatistics
Tai generates polygenic scores using published GWAS summary statistics and benchmarks them for mental health, sleep, and behavioral traits. He also develops distribution-valued regression methods.
PhD advisors: Irina Gaynanova (Biostatistics) and Lars Fritsche
Where alumni go
Former lab members have continued their graduate studies or taken roles in academia and industry. Each entry lists their role in the lab and their next position, with PhD advisors where relevant. The publication links highlight shared work closely connected to our research programs.
Liying Chen, PhD
Graduate Student Research Assistant (GSRA), 2025 to 2026
Statistician, Eli Lilly and Company
PhD advisor: Veera Baladandayuthapani
Ying Ma, PhD
Graduate Student Research Assistant (GSRA), 2020 to 2023
Assistant Professor, Brown University School of Public Health
PhD advisor: Xiang Zhou
Selected shared publications (3)
Brandon Hutchison, MS
Graduate Student Research Assistant (GSRA), 2023 to 2024
MS Candidate, Biostatistics, University of Michigan
Snehal Patil, MS
Application Programmer and original developer of the PRSweb portals, 2019 to 2021
Senior Application Programmer, University of Michigan
Selected shared publications (3)
- ExPRSweb: An online repository with polygenic risk scores for common health-related exposures
- A Phenome-Wide Association Study (PheWAS) of COVID-19 Outcomes by Race Using the Electronic Health Records Data in Michigan Medicine
- Cancer PRSweb: An Online Repository with Polygenic Risk Scores for Major Cancer Traits and Their Evaluation in Two Independent Biobanks
Jiahan Chen, MS
Graduate Student Research Assistant (GSRA), 2019 to 2019
Research Assistant and PhD student in Bioinformatics, North Carolina State University
Robert Peng, MS
Graduate Student Research Assistant (GSRA), 2017 to 2018
PhD Candidate, Department of Statistics, Northwestern University