Introduction: What is GENI?                   

The Gene ENvironment Initiative (GENI) is a School strategic initiative that focuses on issues of genes and the environment, where the environment is broadly defined to include nutrition, pharmacology, and social and behavioral factors and toxicants.  The initiative consists of four "pillars" - quantitative genomics, environmental genetic epidemiology, mechanisms of environmental damage, and exposure biology.  This initiative is designed to bring people on the faculty together to make creative efforts in this area of research and to bring together several areas of traditional excellence at the School - environmental health research, population science, quantitative methods, and bench science - to make an important contribution to understanding the combined effects of genetic and environmental factors on human health. 

Vision 

This is a period of great opportunity to link biological research to major problems in public health.  The explosion of information on the human genome and its function creates enormous opportunities for both basic and population research.  Because of the School’s tradition of excellence in environmental health research, and strengths in population sciences, quantitative methods, and bench science, along with its historic commitment to interdisciplinary research, we can make an important contribution to our understanding of the combined effects of genetic and environmental factors on human health.  It is important that we pursue this opportunity.  To do so, however, we must bring together relevant research capacity in the several intellectual domains that are needed for interdisciplinary research in this area.  Specifically, we must build capacity for population studies of the genetic attributes of populations, the quantitative methods for conducting and analyzing those studies, assessment of the environmental exposures of study populations, and mechanistic studies of the interaction of intrinsic genetic risks and environmental exposures.