Farren B. S. Briggs, Ph.D., Sc.M.

Dr. Briggs is an Associate Professor in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences, in the School of Medicine, at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU); Faculty in the Cleveland Institute for Computational Biology, and a Strategy PI for the International Multiple Sclerosis Genetics Consortium. He is an epidemiologist by training, with a master’s degree in biostatistics, and a wealth of experience investigating multiple facets of the etiology, pathology, and manifestation of various chronic diseases, with an emphasis on multiple sclerosis (MS). He works at the intersection of epidemiology, biostatistics, and genetic epidemiology, and his independent and collaborative research in MS spans the entire disease course using a diverse array of resources (including large-scale –omic data to electronic health records) and methodological approaches. 

Initially, his research focused on elucidating the genetic risk components of autoimmune diseases using parametric and non-parametric statistical methods (i.e. decision tree algorithms, and machine learning methods -- i.e. Random forests). As a National MS Society Post-Doctoral Fellow (2010-2013), his research domains expanded to environmental risks (i.e., adverse socioeconomic conditions) and characterizing gene x environment interactions (genetic modifiers of tobacco smoking risk) contributing to the liability for MS. He has since conducted expanded my primary research portfolio as to focus on improving the phenotyping of MS and other neurodegenerative/psychiatric diseases (including Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, and others).

His current research domains include: 1) characterizing clinical presentation (i.e. onset symptom patterns); 2) identifying subgroups of individuals with similar symptomatology; 3) incorporating multi-omic approaches to investigate molecular signatures (biomarkers); 4) evaluating the impact multi-morbidity and modifiable exogenous factors; and 5) developing prediction models for risk stratification (i.e., nomograms and race-stratified models of longitudinal MS outcomes). 

He is also an educator and mentor and the Associated Director of the Doctoral Program in Epidemiology and Biostatistics and the course director for the primary epidemiology course that introduces the field’s fundamentals. Being a mentor is also a focal point of his CWRU experience. He has mentored a postdoctoral fellow (now Senior Epidemiologist at Syapse Inc.), was the primary mentor for a recent PhD graduate (now a CWRU post-doctoral fellow), and co-mentored three other PhD graduates (now Associate Director at Gilead Sciences, Assistant Professor at Dominican University of California, and Assistant Professor at Duke University). He has also been the primary research mentor for three medical students (all matched at top-choice residency programs at UCSD, UCSF, and University of Washington) and four master in biostatistics students (one who recently graduated with a PhD in Epidemiology from John Hopkins, another is an Epidemiology PhD student at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, another is Data Scientist at Earnin, and the most recent is currently Research Fellow at Novartis). He has also mentored several master of public health and undergraduate students who have gone on to graduate programs at Harvard University, Brown University, Vanderbilt University, Notre Dame University, and John Hopkins University.

In summary, Dr. Briggs is an epidemiologist with an emphasis in genetic and environmental epidemiology. He has experience investigating multiple facets of the etiology, pathology, and manifestation of chronic diseases by designing and using diverse study designs, resources, and methodological approaches. 

Read about Dr. Briggs' work to identify metabolomic serum biomarkers for MS 

View Dr. Briggs' Lab page to meet his team

Read updates about his Lab's work