Michael C. Mahaney, PhD

Professor at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

Michael C. Mahaney, PhD, has a broad educational background in genetics, human physiological and anatomical variation, comparative primate biology and evolution and 40 years of post-graduate research experience in quantitative biology and statistical genetics. Since the late 1980s, Dr. Mahaney’s research has focused on the genetics of complex traits related to human growth, development, aging, and variation in susceptibility, severity and progression of common diseases – especially cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis – in humans and nonhuman primates. A recurring interest has been identifying and characterizing pleiotropic networks of disease risk factors, i.e., multiple traits affected by the same gene or set of genes.
More recent efforts have included participation in extensive studies of 1) the effects of a high cholesterol, high-fat diet on atherosclerosis risk factors and cardiovascular disease endpoints in pedigreed baboons; 2) genetic effects on cardiovascular risk factors in large Mexican American families in San Antonio, Texas; and 3) the effects of genes on co-variation between biomarkers of calcification and bone quality phenotypes in members of the Jirel population of eastern Nepal. 4) Dr. Mahaney also has “kept his hand in” hominid evolutionary biology, collaborating with colleagues in biological anthropology in the quantitative genetics of developmental variation in nonhuman primates’ dentition and craniofacial complex.
Currently, Dr. Mahaney is the Coordinator of the Pilot Studies Program for the Rio Grande Valley Alzheimer’s Disease Resource Center for Minority Aging Research here at the UTRGV and a member of the Research Education Core of the South Texas Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, a collaborative effort with the Glean Biggs Institute for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases at UT Health San Antonio.