Joseph Leo Wiemels PhD

Dr. Joseph Wiemels joined the Center of Genetic Epidemiology at USC in 2018. Dr. Wiemels received his doctorate in Environmental Health Sciences at UC Berkeley in 1997, where he worked on the toxicology of benzene and butadiene with Martyn T. Smith. He then went to the Institute of Cancer Research, UK for postdoctoral work with Mel F. Greaves where he studied the molecular origins of childhood leukemia.

Returning to California in the year 2000, he worked with John Wiencke and Margaret Wrensch (UCSF) and Pat Buffler (UCB) on the molecular epidemiology of childhood leukemia and brain cancer for the past 18 years, continuing this work to this day with primary collaborators Adam de Smith (USC), Catherine Metayer (UCB), Xiaomei Ma (Yale), Scott Kogan (UCSF), Steve Francis (UNR), Charleston Chiang (USC), Nick Mancuso (USC).

Dr. Wiemels believes in a disease-focused research program, utilizing a variety of disciplines that can assess intrinsic and extrinsic causes of cancer starting at population-level disparities in the burden of cancer but then focusing right down to molecular mechanisms so that we can develop cancer prevention measures. Disciplines in the laboratory include epidemiology and genetics, immunology, toxicology, statistics, and developmental biology to understand the origins of cancer.