Dr. Brooke Hjelm serves as instructor for two courses in human genomic analysis methods. Brooke is also a Della Martin Postdoctoral Fellow within the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the UCI Medical School, and utilizes bioinformatics methods to evaluate genomic, transcriptomic, and mitochondrial alterations that occur in psychiatric disorders. Dr. Hjelm is currently investigating the etiological role mitochondrial dysfunction may play in patients with recurrent depression, mapping transcriptional patterns of hypo/hyer-excitability in patients with Schizophenia and Bipolar Disorder, and is working to develop genomic analysis pipelines for the mitochondrial disease research community. Brooke has longstanding interests and expertise in genomics, neurological disorders, and in vitro disease modeling (e.g., iPSCs), and aims to combine these skills to help those afflicted with mental illness. Dr. Hjelm received her Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology in 2013 from Arizona State University, and performed her doctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. David Craig at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen). Brooke has additional postdoctoral experience working on rare childhood disorders as part of TGen’s Center for Rare Childhood Disorders, and gained further experience in applied stem cell biology while working as a postdoctoral scientist at the Regenerative Medicine Institute of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Dr. Hjelm has also served as an Adjunct Professor at Irvine Valley College, teaching several biotechnology courses to students at Northwood High School as part of a dual-enrollment program.