Graduate Coordinator & Assistant Director, Academic Support Services | 352-273-8124 | b.hollister@ufl.edu

Dr. Hollister manages the Genetics & Genomics doctoral program. She is the primary contact for all student matters during the application process, admissions, and once admitted as a student.

Dr. Hollister completed her PhD training in Human Genetics at Vanderbilt University, with a focus on the interaction between social environment and genetic factors affecting disease risk in underrepresented population. She then completed her postdoctoral training as the Health Disparities Fellow at the National Human Genome Research Institute in the National Institutes of Health. There she focused on how the communication of genomic and epigenomic information to non-research populations such as parents, patients, and physician trainees can promote health equity in the age of genomic medicine.

Dr. Hollister also has a passion for genomics education, which has led her to her current position within the Genetics Institute. For any questions related to the admissions process or current student matters, please contact Dr. Hollister, b.hollister@ufl.edu or 352-273-8124.

Graduate Program Advisor | Professor, Anthropology | cmulligan@ufl.edu

Connie Mulligan, PhD, is the Graduate Program Advisor for the Genetics & Genomics Graduate Program, and a professor in the department of anthropology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS). 

Dr. Mulligan discovered her passion for research while earning a Bachelor of Science degree in the Honors Biology program at the University of Illinois. After graduation, she moved to the Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University for her PhD in yeast genetics and tRNA processing. Building on her interest in genetics, Dr. Mulligan switched her focus to human genetics starting as a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama where she discovered that the first humans to colonize the Americas came from Mongolia. Working as a NRC Senior Research Associate at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, she broadened her interest in evolutionary history to include genetic associations in complex diseases like alcoholism. Since coming to UF’s Department of Anthropology, Dr. Mulligan has built a NSF-funded research program to investigate the genetic and psychosocial factors involved in response to stress and related health conditions. Ongoing projects focus on the effect of maternal stress on newborn health outcomes in the Democratic Republic of Congo, multigenerational epigenetic signatures of violence in Syrian refugees, and the impact of racial discrimination on health in African Americans living in Tallahassee. Learn more here.