Sarah
Ocañas

Sarah Ocañas, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Genes and Human Disease Research Program at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation (OMRF) and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Physiology and the Neuroscience Program at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (OUHSC). In 2022, she received the prestigious NIH Director’s Early Independence Award to establish her independent laboratory at OMRF. Her research investigates the genomic, hormonal, and immune mechanisms that drive sex differences in brain aging and Alzheimer’s disease (AD), with a long-term goal of developing sex-informed strategies to prevent or treat AD. Dr. Ocañas earned her Ph.D. from OUHSC, where her NRSA F31-supported dissertation focused on the epigenetic regulation of sexually divergent neuroinflammation in brain aging and AD. She also holds a B.S. in Biology and Mathematics from SUNY Geneseo and an M.S. in Mathematics from UT Brownsville, where she specialized in computational molecular biology.