People
Erin Bakshis Ware

Research Associate Professor, Survey Research Center and Faculty Associate, Population Studies Center, Institute for Social Research
Research Interests:
Dr. Ware has a doctoral degree in epidemiology and master’s degrees in statistics and public health. Dr. Ware’s work for has been focused on health disparities in psychiatric epidemiology and high throughput statistical analysis of genomic data and its relationship to outcomes that show marked disparities across race/ethnic groups, socioeconomic groups and sexes. She also has experience in exploring the relationships among genomic, transcriptomic, and epigenetic data and their interactions with behavioral and socioeconomic risk factors as determinants of chronic disease phenotypes that disproportionately affect minorities using cutting-edge computational methods. She is currently a research associate professor in the Population, Neurodevelopment, and Genetics group in the Survey Research Center integrating biological and social data on a large scale. She has worked and published on the Health and Retirement Study, the Genetic Epidemiology Network of Arteriopathy, and the Army Study to Assess Risk and Resilience in Service members. She teaches statistics, statistical programming, and epidemiology and is particularly skilled at relaying complex computational, statistical and genetic concepts to social scientists and lay persons.
Select Projects
Select Publications
- Luo, T Sophia, LeFaive, Jonathon, Dou, John, Bakulski, Kelly M, Erin Bakshis Ware, Zawistowski, Matthew. 2026. MethylModes: Computationally Efficient Detection of Multimodal Distributions in DNA Methylation Data. Bioinformatics
- Sarinnapha M. Vasunilashorn, Emily Wolfson, Miles Berger, Jacqueline Leung, Erin Bakshis Ware, Andrea Baccarelli, Richard N. Jones, Long H. Ngo, Edward R. Marcantonio, Sharon K. Inouye, Amy J. H. Kind. 2025. Multi‐level social determinants of health, inflammation, and postoperative delirium in older adults. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society 73(1):279-282.
- Erin Bakshis Ware, Higgins Tejera, César, Wang, Herong, Harris, Sean, Fisher, Jonah D., Bakulski, Kelly M.. 2025. Interplay of education and DNA methylation age on cognitive impairment: insights from the Health and Retirement Study. GeroScience 47:3177-3190.
- Mingzhou Fu, Herong Wang, Erin Bakshis Ware, Kelly M. Bakulski. 2025. Understanding causal estimates of smoking behaviors for cognitive impairment: A Mendelian randomization study. Journal of Alzheimer's Disease 104(3):886-901.
- Erin Bakshis Ware, Goode,Joshua, Hornish,Uma Nyx, McNulty,Devin, Karadimas,Thomas Leonidas, Acedo,Gillian, Birchmier, Jaedyn, Histed, Abigail, Hsu, Rachel, Jones, Natasha, Tung,Ryan, Ammous,Farah, Huntley,Edward, Meier,Helen Carmon Spink, Colter Mitchell. 2025. Child and adolescent internalizing and externalizing traits, and epigenetic summary scores: a scoping review. Biological Psychology :109164.
- Sean P. Riley, Erin Bakshis Ware, Zachary Pitre, Nicholas Russell, Daniel W. Flowers. 2025. Pain neuroscience education combined with any singular form of physical therapy intervention is not more effective than the single intervention itself: a systematic review. Journal of Manual & Manipulative Therapy
- Murray B. Stein, ..., Erin Bakshis Ware, et al.. 2024. Polygenic risk for suicide attempt is associated with lifetime suicide attempt in US soldiers independent of parental risk. Journal of Affective Disorders 351:671-682.
- Stoldt, Meike, Ammous,Farah, Lin,Lisha, Ratliff, Scott M, Erin Bakshis Ware, Faul,Jessica Danielle, Zhao,Wei, Kardia, Sharon L R, Smith,Jennifer Ann. 2024. DNA Methylation at CRP-Associated CpG Sites May Mediate the Pathway between Educational Attainment and Cognition. The Journals of Gerontology: Series A 79(8):glae159.
- Kyle A. Campbell, Mingzhou Fu, Elizabeth MacDonald, Matthew Zawistowski, Kelly M. Bakulski, Erin Bakshis Ware. 2024. Relationship between alcohol consumption and dementia with Mendelian randomization approaches among older adults in the United States. Alzheimer's & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring 16(2):e12598.
- Higgins Tejera, César, Erin Bakshis Ware, Margaret Takako Hicken, Kobayashi,Lindsay, Wang, Herong, Blostein, Freida, Zawistowski, Matthew, Mukherjee, Bhramar, Bakulski, Kelly M.. 2024. The mediating role of systemic inflammation and moderating role of racialization in disparities in incident dementia. Communications Medicine 4(1):1-14.