Carol Koob portrait

MU Medicine BBME Featured Talk

***PLEASE NOTE DATE CHANGE BELOW***

Date & Time: Wednesday, January 28, 2026

Location: SOM PCCLC 401 Conference Room

Subject: Understanding the Impact of Obesity on Traumatic Brain Injury Complications Using Obesity Staging Scales

Join us for a keynote presentation by Carol Koob, PhD Student and Graduate Research Assistant in the University of Missouri School of Medicine Translational Bioscience Program.
 

Carol Koob Bio

Carol Koob is a third-year PhD student in the Translational Biosciences program at the University of Missouri, with an emphasis in Population Health and Precision Medicine. She earned her bachelor’s degree in biology and statistics from Truman State University. During her undergraduate studies, she spent four years in a neurophysiology lab investigating how alterations to various therapeutic targets affect Drosophila melanogaster behavior and helped develop a protocol for live imaging of mitochondrial movement in Drosophila neurons.

At the University of Missouri, Carol has contributed to data analyses involving healthcare workers and vaccination outcomes and served as both a front-line staff member and researcher for the NIH All of Us Research Program during its launch at the university. Her current research uses electronic health record data to study traumatic injury outcomes, with a particular focus on understanding how obesity influences long-term recovery. She examines multiple measures of obesity derived from health records, including obesity staging scales, across diverse datasets to assess the consistency of findings.

Research in Biomedical Informatics, Biostatistics and Medical Epidemiology includes clinical informatics, epidemiology and population health, health informatics and surveillance, biostatistics, medical informatics, medicine, enabling and improving efforts in translational precision medicine and basic science investigation.

Services & Consultation

Department research support features peer-reviewed sources including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS), the Missouri Foundation for Health (MFH), Department of Veteran Affairs, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and other federal, state, local, academic, and foundation partners.

Faculty members actively participate in institutional research activities collaborating with various University of Missouri units including the NextGen Precision Health initiative, MU Institute for Clinical and Translational Science, Ellis Fischel Cancer Center, the Bond Life Sciences Center, MU Institute for Data Science and Informatics, and the UMKC Center for Health Insights.

Graduate students study to obtain a master's degree, with certificates available to support specialized professional subject matter, engage in assistantships in research working with faculty in the department and centers. For additional information regarding MSHI (Informatics) programs, please contact the Director of Graduate Studies, Fares Alahdab, MD, MSc.

Research training opportunities for post-doctoral fellows, residents, medical students, and undergraduates at times may also be available; those interested should contact individual centers and faculty members. The diversity of biomedical informatics, biostatistics and medical epidemiology investigators generates significant funded research contributions to health and medicine in Missouri and beyond.

The department includes the following centers, cores, and labs:

Research Groups/Labs

Associated Centers/Organizations

Some Current Research Areas and Topics

  • Accountable healthcare systems
  • Bioinformatics
  • Biomedical Informatics
  • Biostatistics
  • Cancer genomics
  • Cancer research registry
  • Clinical informatics
  • Clinical research informatics
  • Consumer health informatics
  • Computational biology, whole-genome sequencing data
  • Diabetes translational research dissemination
  • Electronic medical records (EMR)
  • Electronic health records (EHR)
  • Health surveillance projects
  • Healthcare industry economics, finance, and policy
  • Informatics for healthcare
  • Medical informatics
  • Population-based cancer registry
  • Public health informatics
  • Pregnancy risk assessment monitoring system (PRAMS)
  • Translational BioInformatics