Markos Tesfaye Woldeyohannes, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry
Institute for Genomics in Health
Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences
Dr. Tesfaye’s research investigates the genetic, epigenetic, and environmental factors involved in the causation of major depressive disorder and related mental disorders across populations. He is interested in the application of statistical genetics methods and stratification of individuals with mental disorders by different demographic, clinical, and environmental variables to advance precision psychiatry.
Dr. Tesfaye graduated from the School of Medicine at Jimma University and completed a psychiatry residency at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. He earned his PhD from the University of Copenhagen. Dr. Tesfaye was awarded the African Postdoctoral Training Initiative (APTI) fellowship to study the epigenetic mechanisms of the effect of maternal psychosocial factors on fetal brain development as a visiting fellow at the US NIH. He also received postdoctoral training in psychiatric genetics at the University of Oslo and in psychiatric epigenetics at the University of Bergen, Norway.
His research examined shared genetic architectures of anxiety disorders and irritable bowel syndrome with various mental disorders. Dr. Tesfaye’s research also investigated the sex differences in the DNA methylation associated with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. At SUNY Downstate, Dr. Tesfaye is a member of the POP-GEM Lab, and his research focuses on characterizing the sex differences in genetic and environmental factors in major depressive disorder by applying various statistical genetics methods.