Terooatea, Tommy

Tommy W. Terooatea, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Brigham Young University and Director of the BYU Genomics and Bioinformatics Center. He received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Utah and his B.S. in Biochemistry from Brigham Young University–Hawaii.

Dr. Terooatea is a computational biologist specializing in genomics, systems biology, and multi-omic data integration. Prior to BYU, he worked as a senior bioinformatician at KOTAI Biotechnologies and as a research scientist at RIKEN in Japan, where he contributed to large-scale international efforts including the RIKEN Aging Atlas and the Human Cell Atlas. His work has focused on single-cell genomics, immune system dynamics, and epigenomic regulation across aging and disease contexts.

At BYU, he leads the development of advanced genomics infrastructure and mentors students in computational biology and data-driven biomedical research.

Research in the Terooatea Lab focuses on understanding how immune system dynamics, cellular regulatory networks, and tissue environments contribute to cancer development and progression. Using single-cell and multi-omic approaches (including scRNA-seq, scATAC-seq, scVDJ and spatial transcriptomics), the lab investigates how immune cells respond to tumor-associated signals and how these responses change with aging and environmental exposure.

A central goal of the lab is to identify regulatory mechanisms that drive immune dysfunction, tumor immune evasion, and chronic inflammation—key processes underlying cancer initiation and progression. The lab also develops computational methods to reconstruct time-resolved gene regulatory networks, enabling the identification of critical control points that may serve as therapeutic targets.

Through integration of genomics, bioinformatics, and systems biology, this work aims to advance precision medicine approaches and improve understanding of cancer risk, progression, and treatment response across diverse populations.

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