Scott R Diehl PhD
Professor, Oral Biology, Rutgers School of Dental Medicine; Professor, Health Informatics, Rutgers Biomedical Health Sciences, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Newark, New JerseyDr Scott Diehl completed a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook (SUNY) with dual majors in Biology and Psychology. His doctoral research in genetics was performed at the University of Texas at Austin, followed by postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and searching for the gene that causes neurofibromatosis as a Research Associate in the Department of Human Genetics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Dr Diehl next joined the faculty of the Medical College of Virginia from 1988 to 1993, performing research in Human Genetics and Psychiatry. From 1993-2002 he served as Chief of the Molecular Epidemiology and Disease Indicators Branch of the National Institute of Dental Research, and in other positions at the NIH. Since 2002, Dr Diehl has been teaching and conducting research as Professor of Oral Biology of Rutgers School of Dental Medicine, a part of Rutgers Biomedical Health Sciences (RBHS) of Rutgers University.
The focus of the Diehl Laboratory is to study Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) and other forms of variation in patients’ DNA to better understand the molecular causes of individual differences in disease susceptibility and in responses to drugs and other therapies. This "big data" research requires advanced computational systems, bioinformatics tools and databases. DNA variation is assayed using high-throughput microarrays and Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies. High performance computing is necessary to perform the complex statistical genetic calculations on billions of data points required for this approach. Current research areas include genetic studies of trigeminal neuralgia and other forms of neuropathic pain, periodontitis, dental caries and head and neck cancers including nasopharyngeal carcinoma.