Yesol Sapozhnikov

I am a Clinical Assistant Professor in the School of Health and Medical Professions (SHAMP), University of Idaho, where I teach and conduct computational health research.

My research applies statistical modeling and machine learning to high-dimensional data, with interests spanning rural health, population-level health outcomes, and genomics. Some of this work is inferential — identifying what drives differences in health outcomes — and some is predictive, building tools that estimate risk from clinical and genomic data. I am particularly interested in applying omics approaches to study health outcomes in cancer survivors.

I came to research by a circuitous route. I began my career in healthcare as a Licensed Vocational Nurse in Los Angeles, and my interests oscillated between the natural sciences and nursing for some years. While working at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center as a Registered Nurse, I became fascinated by the range of biomedical research labs on campus, and with a generous scholarship from Cedars I completed their Masters program in Biomedical Science, which gave me a deep appreciation of sequencing technology and quantitative genomics. I was then ready to fully commit to research and came to the University of Idaho to pursue a PhD in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, during which I studied mutational effects on protein stability via statistical and molecular modeling. After finishing, I worked as a postdoctoral fellow in SHAMP where I pivoted to population health research.

Outside of work and research, I enjoy reading webtoons and sci-fi novels, hiking and camping, and making art with my daughter.