Dr. Scott Damrauer is a surgeon-scientist dedicated to advancing the understanding of the biological pathways and mechanisms most relevant in the etiology, progression, and treatment of heart and vascular disease. His research leverages his clinical vascular surgery experience to inform population scale genomic research. In this, he has focused primarily on disease that he also treats clinically: peripheral artery disease (PAD), venous thromboembolism (VTE), abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA), and thoracic aortic disease (TAD).  Situated within the VA Million Veteran Program and the Penn Medicine BioBank, Dr. Damrauer’s work has significantly advanced our understanding of the genetic architecture of these diseases. His current work focuses on leveraging these findings to explore the causal relationship of risk factors across traits, identify novel therapeutic targets, and develop new ways to use genetics to identify individuals at risk of adverse outcomes. 

One of the criticisms of genomic medicine has been the lack of studies in diverse populations. Dr. Damrauer’s work has tried address these disparities, specifically tackling important, outstanding questions in genomics as they apply to diverse populations. To help achieve this, he has led a large interagency collaboration between the VA and the Department of Energy to map the genetic architecture of health and disease traits in > 650,00 diverse Veterans as part of the VA Million Veteran Program. These analyses, comprised of ~52,000 Latinx and ~120,000 African ancestry individuals, represent the largest existing effort to understand the genetics of health and disease in diverse populations in the United States

Dr. Damrauer’s work is supported by the NIH and the VA Office of Research and Development.