The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) awarded a $709,563 Project Grant under the Diabetes, Digestive, and Kidney Diseases Extramural Research program (CFDA 93.847) to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). The award will fund a 5-year research project to leverage transcriptomic, metabolomic, and genetic data to improve understanding of the mechanisms underlying severe obesity in Hispanic/Latino populations, an understudied and disproportionately impacted group. Key objectives include identifying transcriptomic and metabolomic signals associated with severe obesity, deriving ancestry-informed expression and metabolite quantitative trait loci, and integrating these multi-omic data to infer causal pathways and establish clinical significance using polygenic risk scores. UNC-CH will collaborate with Brigham & Women's Hospital and Vanderbilt University Medical Center on data analyses and polygenic risk score development. The project aims to broaden the representation of Hispanic/Latino populations in genomics research and advance knowledge of severe obesity susceptibility in this community.