Assistant Professor
Yale University Dept of Genetics
Dr. Jun Lu is an Assistant Professor of Genetics at Yale University and a core member of the Yale Stem Cell Center. He obtained his doctoral degree in 2003 in Biochemistry at Boston University, where he studied under the guidance of Dr. Katya Ravid with a focus on transcriptional and epigenetic gene regulation in hematopoiesis and cancer. Dr. Lu received postdoctoral training from Dr. Todd Golub at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (now the Broad Institute), where he became fascinated by the emerging field of microRNA, which controls post-transcriptional gene regulation. He has used genomic approaches to highlight the potential of microRNAs in cancer diagnostics, and importance of small RNA function in mammalian cell fate determination.
Since joining the Yale faculty, Dr. Lu has continued to study microRNA function in hematopoiesis, cancer, and pluripotent stem cells. His laboratory has discovered microRNA-mediated control in blood cell recovery and in complex oncogene addiction behavior. In addition, his laboratory is pioneering new miRNA technologies, including in vitro and in vivo functional genetic screens in mouse and high-throughput functional definition of microRNA targeting. Dr. Lu was a Scholar of the William Guy Forbeck Research Foundation and a recipient of the Stewart Trust Fellowship.
Assistant Professor
Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Section of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Department of Community and Family Medicine
Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth
Carmen joined the faculty at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth in 2011. Prior to Dartmouth, Carmen was an assistant professor in the Departments of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Community Health (Epidemiology) at Brown University. He holds a BS degree in Biochemistry from Lafayette College, and a PhD in the Biological Sciences in Public Health, focused on Cancer Biology, from Harvard University. Carmen was a post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, where he gained training and interest in molecular epidemiology and epigenetics in cancer. During his postdoctoral training, he began his studies of DNA methylation alterations and variation in bladder cancer, considering not their role in disease etiology but also their clinical importance as biomarkers of risk or prognosis.
At Brown, Carmen expanded his research program to examine the importance of epigenetic regulation in human development and the importance of the intrauterine environment on human health, focusing on mental health. He has successfully designed and executed the Rhode Island Child Health Study, a population-base birth cohort designed to examine the impact of placental epigenetic variation on early life neurobehavioral and other health outcome. He continues to expand his work on the role of epigenetic mechanisms including DNA methylation and microRNA expression in the developmental origins of health and disease, as well as aiming to expand his work to define biomarkers applicable to the clinical setting.
Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular biology
School of Medicine, University of Louisville
Eugenia is Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the School of Medicine, University of Louisville (UofL), Louisville, Kentucky. She also holds the Gheens Endowed Chair in Aging and is the Director of the Gheens Center on Aging at UofL. Until March, 2000, Dr. Wang was Professor of Anatomy & Cell Biology, Neurology & Neurosurgery, and Medicine, at McGill University in Montréal, Québec, Canada, where she was also Director of the Bloomfield Center for Research in Aging at the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research. She has trained undergraduate, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in areas of mechanisms controlling the aging process, including determination of cellular senescence, mouse aging, and human longevity studying centenarian populations.
Dr. Wang received her Bachelor of Science degree from the National Taiwan University, her M.Sc. from Northern Michigan University, and her Ph.D. from Case Western Reserve University. Afterwards, she did postdoctoral training and an assistant professorship at the Rockefeller University, and then took her post at McGill University in 1987. Since 1981, Dr. Wang's research has involved investigating the molecular mechanisms controlling the process of aging, at both cellular and organismic levels. Her recent work involves investigating gene-directed programs regulating the ontogeny of age-dependent diseases, and how genetic action, specifically those of the noncoding RNA, controls longevity, integrating knowledge gained from study of extreme long-lived mouse strains to identify key microRNAs for extended life span.