Abhi Rao, Ph.D

Program Director

Dr. Rao joined BBRB as a Program Manager for the NIH Common Fund’s Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) program, which procured high-quality human tissues to help identify patient-specific change in gene expression, ultimately contributing to the development of targeted molecular medicine. She received her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and completed her postdoctoral studies in clinical nanotechnology at Georgetown University. In addition to GTEx, she has focused on a number of varied initiatives related to the Cancer Moonshot Biobank, the NCI Best Practices for Biospecimen Resources, the economics of biobanking, specimen access review, communication initiatives, BBRB’s funding opportunity, and more.