Mukesh Verma, Ph.D.

Biography

Mukesh Verma, PhD, is a senior scientific advisor in the Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program's (EGRP) Office of the Associate Director. In this role, Dr. Verma provides strategic scientific leadership and expert guidance to advance EGRP’s mission. He collaborates across the program to identify emerging scientific opportunities, provide programmatic decision-making, and strengthen coordination on cross-cutting activities that enhance collaboration and innovation across EGRP.

Dr. Verma represents NCI in Common Fund Programs on Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity, Human Virome Project (HVP), and the congressionally mandated program on Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcome (ECHO). He was also involved in the Common Fund’s former Metabolomics program.

Dr. Verma provides collaborative scientific leadership across NCI, NIH, and external organizations as an executive committee member of the Consortium of Metabolomic Studies (COMETS) and as a member of the Metabolomic Association of North America (MANA) and the international Metabolomics Quality Assurance and Quality Control Consortium (mQACC). Dr. Verma is the faculty coordinator for the NCI Translational Research in Clinical Oncology program, helping shape scientific topics and presentations. He also serves as the NCI representative in the NIH Program Leadership Committee.

Since joining the NCI, Dr. Verma has championed the visibility of and investment in cancer epigenetics research both within the Institute and across other federal and non-governmental agencies and to raise public awareness about controlling cancer. In this capacity, he was also involved with the former Common Fund Epigenomics Program’s NIH Working Group.

Dr. Verma previously served as the branch chief for EGRP’s Methods and Technologies Branch, where he oversaw its research portfolio and initiatives focused on methods for epidemiologic data collection, study design and analysis, and modification of technological approaches developed in the context of other research endeavors for use as biomarkers and methods to understand cancer susceptibility. He was also responsible for stimulating research in implication of omics approaches to understand cancer etiology.

Dr. Verma joined EGRP as a program director in 2004. In 2005, he was appointed acting chief of EGRP's former Analytic Epidemiology Research Branch (AERB). When EGRP reorganized in 2007, he was appointed acting chief of MTB and of the former Host Susceptibility Factors Branch (now the Genomic Epidemiology Branch), for which he served as acting chief through 2008. Before joining EGRP, Dr. Verma was a program director in NCI's Division of Cancer Prevention (DCP), where he worked in the areas of biomarkers, early detection, risk assessment, and prevention. He also was coordinator of DCP's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Programs. Dr. Verma was on the faculty in the Biochemistry Department of Georgetown University before joining NIH.

Dr. Verma is a member on the editorial boards of journals Clinical Epigenetics and the Journal of Personalized Medicine. He has 189 publications and has edited 6 books in the field of epigenetics, biomarkers, virology, and epidemiology.

Select Publications

Riscuta G, Wali A, Mongodin EF, Verma M, Cardone M, Kim H-S, McNealy T, Mohammed A. The Oral Microbiome: A Silent Contributor to Systemic Health and Disease National Institutes of Health 2024 Workshop (2026). Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2026 Sep 1;35(9):1490-1494.

Yu CT, Chao BN, Barajas R, et al. An evaluation of the National Institutes of Health grants portfolio: identifying opportunities and challenges for multi-omics research that leverage metabolomics data. Metabolomics. 2022;18(5):29.

Chang HY, Colby SM, Du X, et al. A Practical Guide to Metabolomics Software Development. Anal Chem. 2021;93(4):1912-1923.

Gallicchio L, Daee D, Rotunno M, Barajas R, Fagan S, Carrick D, Divi R, Filipski K, Freedman A, Gillanders E, Lam T, Martin D, Rogers S, Verma M, Nelson S. Epidemiologic research of rare cancers: trends, resources, and challenges. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2021 Jul;30(7):1305-1311.

Yu B, Zanetti KA, Temprosa M, et al. The Consortium of Metabolomics Studies (COMETS): metabolomics in 47 prospective cohort studies. Am J Epidemiol. 2019;188(6):991-1012.

Beger RD, Dunn WB, Bandukwala A, et al. Towards quality assurance and quality control in untargeted metabolomics studies. Metabolomics. 2019;15(1):4.

Sinha R, Ahsan H, Blaser M, et al. Next steps in studying the human microbiome and health in prospective studies, Bethesda, MD, May 16-17, 2017. Microbiome. 2018;6(1):210.

Verma M, Kumar V. Single cell epigenomics: technology and applications. In: Barh D, Azevedo V, eds. Single-Cell Omics. New York, NY: Elsevier Inc.; 2019: chap 11, 215- 229.

Verma M. Mechanistic and technical challenges in studying the human microbiome and cancer epidemiology. Technol Cancer Res Treat. 2017;16(2):150-158.

Moravec R, Divi R, Verma M. Detecting circulating tumor material and digital pathology imaging during pancreatic cancer progression. World J Gastrointest Oncol. 2017;9(6):235-250.