PhD
Assistant Professor, Genetics
Director, UNC Lineberger Bioinformatics Core Facility
UNC-Chapel Hill
Cancer Genetics Research Program
Area of Interest
David Corcoran, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Genetics and co-director of the UNC Lineberger Bioinformatics Core Facility. He leads a team of bioinformaticians and software developers focused on advancing reproducible research and building custom computational tools to accelerate discovery in biomedical science.
With deep expertise in large-scale omics analysis, bioinformatics infrastructure, and collaborative data science, Dr. Corcoran specializes in developing scalable and integrative approaches for analyzing complex genomic, transcriptomic, and epigenomic datasets. His group supports projects across a wide range of cancer types and biological systems, often working at the intersection of machine learning and basic or translational sciences.
Since joining UNC, Dr. Corcoran has collaborated closely with multiple UNC Lineberger investigators and programs, including the InterMEL Consortium, the Bladder Cancer Research Program, the Breast Cancer SPORE, and the Carolina Endometrial Cancer Study. These partnerships have led to numerous peer-reviewed publications and successful federal grant awards.
Dr. Corcoran is a co-inventor of the DunedinPACE and FraminghamPACE epigenetic aging algorithms, tools designed to quantify biological aging from DNA methylation data. His research interests include investigating how biological aging influences cancer susceptibility, progression, and treatment response, with the ultimate goal of informing precision prevention and therapeutic strategies.
