Elissa Chesler completed her PhD study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and her postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Dr. Robert Williams at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis. She is the Systems Genetics Group Leader at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where she is currently developing and characterizing a large genetic reference population, the Collaborative Cross. Her research emphasizes the integration of genomic and phenomic resources. Dr. Chesler's previous research explored important issues pertaining to the widespread use of standard inbred mouse strains for this purpose. She has established several algorithmic, statistical and population-based hurdles to the use of common inbred strains as a genetic mapping panel. She has also examined issues in combining data from genetic projects across labs, extracting specific factors repsponsible for genetic interactions with the laboratory environment using recursive partitioning techniques for analysis of a large data archive featuring observations of a single behavioral measurement acquired thousands of times in the laboratory of one investigator. She has also been a part of early developments in systems genetics, by demonstrating the integrated analysis of gene expression, genetics, and complex phenotypes in a genetic reference population using statistical and combinatorial approaches.