Rate My Professor Kristy Crooks

Kristy Crooks, PhD, FACMG, serves as Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. She obtained her PhD from Duke University in 2006. Following this, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Duke University Center for Human Genetics from 2007 to 2011. Dr. Crooks then pursued ABMGG-accredited fellowships in Clinical Molecular Genetics from 2011 to 2013 and in Clinical Cytogenetics from 2013 to 2015, both at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Board-certified as a clinical molecular geneticist and cytogeneticist, she holds key leadership positions including Director of the Colorado Center for Personalized Medicine Biobank Laboratory and Program Director for the Laboratory Genetics and Genomics Fellowship. Additionally, she is an Associate Professor on the Clinical Molecular Oncology Colorado (CMOCO) team.

Dr. Crooks's research encompasses human genetics, genomics, biobanks, polygenic risk scores, pharmacogenetics, and ancestry considerations in genomics. Her influential publications include "Recommendations for Next-Generation Sequencing Germline Variant Confirmation: A Joint Report of the Association for Molecular Pathology and National Society of Genetic Counselors" (Journal of Molecular Diagnostics, 2023), "Mapping the human genetic architecture of COVID-19" (Nature, 2021; 630 citations), "Global Biobank Meta-analysis Initiative: Powering genetic discovery across human disease" (Cell Genomics, 2022; 466 citations), "Actionable exomic incidental findings in 6503 participants: challenges of variant classification" (Genome Research, 2015; 430 citations), "Building a vertically integrated genomic learning health system: The biobank at the Colorado Center for Personalized Medicine" (American Journal of Human Genetics, 2024), and "The clinical imperative for inclusivity: race, ethnicity, and ancestry (REA) in genomics" (Human Mutation, 2018; 168 citations). She chairs the Genetics Subdivision of the Association for Molecular Pathology and was elected to its Board of Directors. Her laboratory contributed to developing a molecular test for COVID-19 detection during the pandemic.