Bioengineering Seminar Series
Virtual event - REGISTER here for participation link
"Genome Folding, Unfolding, and Refolding in the Human Brain"
Jennifer Phillips-Cremins, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Dean’s Faculty Fellow in Engineering and Medicine New York Stem Cell Foundation
Robertson Investigator Department of Genetics
Perelman School of Medicine Department of Bioengineering
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
University of Pennsylvania
RESEARCH
The Cremins lab investigates the epigenetic mechanisms regulating development and function of the mammalian central nervous system. We map and analyze neuronal epigenomes in three-dimensions using quantitative, genome-wide technologies. We also perturb epigenomes by employing state-of-the art genetic engineering strategies (e.g. CRISPR/Cas9, optoepigenetics). To test our hypotheses, we primarily use embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cell models of neuronal differentiation and disease. Our long-term goal is to discover how genome architecture controls genome function, applying this to study fundamental mechanisms controlling neuronal phenotype and, by extension, the onset and progression of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disease states.
BIO
Jennifer Phillips-Cremins, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor and Deans' Faculty Fellow in Engineering and Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania with primary appointments in the Departments of Bioengineering and Genetics. Dr. Cremins obtained her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in the laboratory of Andres Garcia. She then conducted a multi-disciplinary postdoc in the laboratories of Job Dekker and Victor Corces. Dr. Cremins now runs the Chromatin Architecture and Systems Neurobiology laboratory at UPenn. Her primary research interests lie in understanding the long-range chromatin architecture mechanisms that govern neural specification and synaptic plasticity in healthy neurons and how these epigenetic mechanisms go awry in neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases. She has been selected as a 2014 New York Stem Cell Foundation Robertson Investigator, a 2015 Albert P. Sloan Foundation Fellow, a 2016 and 2018 Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow, 2015 NIH Director's New Innovator Awardee, 2020 NSF CAREER Awardee, and a 2020 CZI Neurodegenerative Disease Pairs Awardee.