Departments
Roles
Dr. An is an Acting Assistant Professor in the Department of Oral Health Sciences at the University of Washington School of Dentistry. Dr. An obtained his DDS degree from the University of Washington in 2016 and his Ph.D. in 2019. He is a UW Magnuson Scholar and recipient of a graduate training award from the […]
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Departments
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
Innovation in protein design to target aging and age-related disease Dr. Baker has pioneered methods to predict and design the three-dimensional structures of proteins. He is the Henrietta and Aubrey Davis Endowed Professor in Biochemistry and an adjunct professor of Genome Sciences, Bioengineering, Chemical Engineering, Computer Science, and Physics. He serves as the Director of […]
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Departments
Division of Gerontology, Medicine, Psychiatry
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
Decline in blood-brain barrier function during aging Dr. Banks is Professor, Division of Gerontology & Geriatric Medicine and Associate Director for Research of the Puget Sound Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center. The major focus of his research is the study of how the brain and body communicate with one another through the transfer of […]
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Departments
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Medicine
Roles
BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
Genome replication and its role in aging Dr. Bedalov is an Associate Member in the Clinical Research Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Dr. Bedalov is a bone marrow transplant specialist who treats people for blood disorders, leukemia, lymphoma, multiple myeloma and myelodysplastic syndrome. He runs an active research laboratory that uses S. […]
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Departments
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
The Berg lab studies the effect of mutations that disrupt cell fate and cell migration during development. Using Drosophila as a model system, they explore how gene dysregulation impacts organ structure and function, leading to reduced viability and fertility. The underlying cell and molecular mechanisms involved in these processes also contribute to human disorders, for […]
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Departments
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Lab Medicine and Pathology
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
Role of DNA mutation in aging and cancer Dr. Bielas is an Associate Member in the Translational Research Program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and an Affiliate Associate Professor in the UW Department of Lab Medicine and Pathology. He has a long-standing interest in the relationships between aging, mutagenesis, and cancer. His past […]
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Departments
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HALO Faculty, Training Program Alumnus
Dr. Bitto is an Acting Instructor in the Department of Lab Medicine and Pathology. His research is focused on understanding the interaction between biological aging, mitochondrial function, and metabolic disease. Dr. Bitto was a BMHA post-doctoral fellow on the Genetic Approaches to Aging Training Grant from 2013-2016 and is the recipient of a post-doctoral research […]
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
Dr. Davis is a movement disorder neurologist and researcher at the VA Puget Sound Healthcare System and and Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on understanding the mechanisms underlying the production and spread of pathogenic protein aggregation in aging and aging-related neurodegenerative diseases, in particular Parkinson’s […]
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Departments
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty, Invertebrate Core Director, NSC Core Director
Aneuploidy, evolution, and aging. Dr. Dunham develops and applies genomic tools to study genome evolution and genetic variation in yeast and humans. She has a special interest in how gene and chromosome copy number variation contributes to adaptation, the mechanisms by which such variation arises, and the relationship between aneuploidy and aging. They utilize the budding […]
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Departments
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
Dr. Eisenberg is a biological anthropologist who studies how evolution has shaped human biology and aging. Dan’s research is primarily on telomere biology and has principally been in collaboration with population-based studies in non-western contexts such as the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey in the Philippines and the Tsimane’ Amazonian Panel Study in Bolivia. […]
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Departments
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Genome Sciences
Roles
Dr. Harris uses population genetic theory and high-throughput biological sequence analysis to study recent evolutionary history in humans and other species. One are of particular interest is the evolution of mutagenesis the forces that control DNA replication fidelity, the mutational breakdown of established traits, and the ultimate origin of new traits. Although DNA is replicated and […]
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Departments
Roles
The Hurley lab focuses on understanding how energy metabolism is controlled in photoreceptors and how this changes with age. In darkness, photoreceptors consume energy rapidly to offset the leakage of ions across the plasma membrane. Light stops that leakage but it introduces qualitatively different energy demands. Dr. Hurley and his colleagues are investigating how the […]
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Departments
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Dr. Keene received his education at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (B.S. in Cell and Molecular Biology) and the University of Minnesota (M.D. and Ph.D. in Neuroscience). His post-graduate medical training in Anatomic Pathology and Neuropathology was at the University of Washington where he earned a faculty position in Neuropathology. Currently, Dr. Keene is […]
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Departments
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty, Training Program Alumnus
Mitochondrial mutagenesis in aging and neurodegeneration Dr. Kennedy is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Lab Medicine and Pathology. Dr. Kennedy has a long standing interest in elucidating how somatic mutations, primarily focused on the mitochondrial genome, influence aging and age associated diseases, such as neurodegeneration. During his post-doctoral training with Dr. Lawrence A. […]
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Departments
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
Aging factors in complex heritable conditions. Dr. King’s group uses next generation sequencing approaches to identify genes responsible for complex human conditions. Since the 1970s, her group has exploited approaches from genetics, then molecular biology, then genomics to discover and characterize genes for inherited disease. There are four areas of her work that offer insights […]
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Departments
Biochemistry, Chemistry, Pharmacology
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
Understanding of molecular recognition, and interactions that play important roles in aging and disease Dr. Klevit is the Edmond H. Fischer/WRF Endowed Chair in Biochemistry, an Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology, and Adjunct Professor of Chemistry. Current research in Dr. Klevit’s laboratory is directed towards an understanding of fundamental molecular recognition events involved in the process […]
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Departments
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
As an investigator at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System, Dr. Kraemer’s research explores how protein aggregation contributes to neurodegenerative diseases. Dr. Kraemer has developed animal models of the TDP-43 pathology seen in ALS and the tau pathology seen in Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementias using both transgenic mice and transgenic C. elegans. Dr. […]
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Departments
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Administrative Core Faculty, BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
Geropathology and mouse models in translational geroscience Dr. Ladiges is Professor of comparative medicine and Director of the Geropathology Research Network and the UW Nathan Shock Center Geropathology Resource. He has extensive experience in the pathobiological evaluation and modeling of mice for preclinical aging and intervention studies and has been a leader in the application […]
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Departments
Computer Science, Genome Sciences
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AI Core Director, BMHA Executive Committee, BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty, Shock Center Executive Committee
Understanding aging through explainable machine learning The Lee lab seeks to develop explainable AI for life sciences. Explainable in this context means understanding which features drive the prediction. The Lee lab has been collaborating with the Kaeberlein lab to develop and apply machine learning to aging biology, with the initial goal of using noisy human […]
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Departments
Roles
BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty, Metabolomics Core Director, NSC Core Director, Proteomics Core Director, Shock Center Executive Committee
Applications of mass spectrometry in the biology of aging The focus of Dr. MacCoss’ laboratory is in the development and application of cutting edge mass spectrometry based technologies for the analysis of complex protein mixtures. His primary area of expertise is in protein biochemistry, nanoflow liquid chromatography, mass spectrometry instrumentation, and computational analysis of mass […]
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Departments
Bioengineering, Lab Medicine and Pathology, Radiology
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
Dr. Marcinek joined the UW faculty in 2006. He has over 15 years of experience developing and applying innovative tools to study mitochondrial biology in chronic disease and aging. A main focus of his laboratory is to understand how age-related changes in mitochondrial function at the biochemical and organelle levels translate to changes in in […]
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Departments
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BMHA Internal Advisory Board, HALO Faculty
Dr. Martin has led a long and productive career at the University of Washington, where he received his BS and MD degrees and has been a member of its faculty since 1957. He worked as a surgical pathologist and cytogeneticist in the UW Department of Pathology since 1957, and he served as the founding director […]
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Departments
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty, Invertebrate Core Faculty
Dr. Mendenhall’s laboratory utilizes the nematode C. elegans to understand how and why genetically identical populations of cells and animals in the same environment age differently. How much and what kind of physiological variation is intrinsic/chance based, or is programmed and heritable? The lab takes the approach of directly observing events inside of living cells […]
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Departments
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
Dr. Miller’s lab uses C. elegans to define relationships between proteostasis, the responses to hypoxia and hydrogen sulfide, and fasting. This work is also at the crux of understanding the relationships between stress response and aging. She has found that protein homeostasis is disrupted by exposure to specific hypoxic O2 concentrations [66]. One goal of […]
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Departments
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
Molecular Basis of Aging The goal of the Moreno lab is to understand how the function and regulation of ion channels change during the natural process of aging. Aging comes with a vast set of impairments, hearing loss, cardiac dysfunction, and hypertension, are only a few on the list. Most of these impairments are caused […]
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Departments
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
Mitochondrial quality control in aging. Much of Dr. Pallanck’s current work stems from his studies of Drosophila homologs of the Parkinson’s disease-related genes parkin and PINK1. His work on Parkin and PINK1 led to his hypothesis that these factors promote the degradation of damaged mitochondria through mitophagy, a mitochondrial-selective form of autophagy. Work in many […]
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Departments
Biology, Lab Medicine and Pathology
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Executive Committee, HALO Faculty, Metabolomics Core Director, Shock Center Executive Committee
Dr. Promislow studies natural genetic variation in aging and reproduction. His research is focused on aging in several systems – the fruit fly, companion dogs, and humans. He uses a diversity of approaches in his lab, including molecular and quantitative genetics, evolutionary theory, and systems biology to construct and analyze genetic and metabolomic networks. Among […]
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Departments
Roles
BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
Gene regulation and heritable phenotypic variation in aging The Queitsch lab focuses on two related fields: the genetic architecture of complex traits and the role of gene regulation and protein folding in generating heritable phenotypic variation – including phenotypes of aging. We advance complex trait genetics by ascertaining uncharacterized sequence variation and by resolving the […]
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Departments
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Administrative Core Director, BMHA Executive Committee, Development Core Director, HALO Faculty, Shock Center Director, Shock Center Executive Committee
Mitochondrial function and healthspan Peter Rabinovitch has served on the faculty of the Department of Lab Medicine and Pathology since 1983. He has been an active investigator in the biology of aging throughout his career, is the author of over 290 peer-reviewed publications, and is the founding director of the UW Nathan Shock Center of […]
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Departments
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
C. elegans aging and healthspan extension Dr. Rea is an Associate Professor of Lab Medicine and Pathology. His laboratory utilizes the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans to probe the fundamental mechanisms of aging and mitochondrial dysfunction in humans. His research spanning three decades has revealed that nematode lifespan is controlled by a roughly equal mix of genetics, […]
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Departments
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BMHA Internal Advisory Board, HALO Faculty
Dr. Reed is Section Chief of Geriatric Medicine at Harborview, Medical Director of the HMC Senior Care Clinic and UW Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine. She is also Associate Director of the Geriatric Medicine Fellowship Program. Dr. Reed’s longstanding interest is in evaluating the effects of the […]
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Departments
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
Mechanisms of tissue dysfunction during aging Dr. Regnier is a Professor and Interim Chair of Bioengineering at UW. Dr. Regnier’s research goal is to develop novel approaches to prevent or restore age-related loss of muscle function, such as protein, cell & tissue engineering and gene therapy. Research in the Regnier lab is interdisciplinary and studies […]
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Departments
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BMHA Executive Committee, BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
Genomic instability, cancer and aging The main focus of Dr. Risques’ research is the study of the molecular mechanisms that link genomic instability and aging. The main molecular alterations that her lab studies are telomere shortening, mitochondrial dysfunction, and age-related accumulation of somatic mutations. She has published on comparative analyses of aging relating telomere length […]
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Departments
Biochemistry, Biology, Genome Sciences
Roles
BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
Adult stem cell aging Dr. Ruohola-Baker’s laboratory studies the molecules and cellular properties that are required for stem cell states and their differentiation capacity. During the recent years the laboratory has shown that microRNAs and the HIF pathway play key roles in regulating adult and embryonic stem cell self-renewal in model organisms as well as […]
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Departments
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Shabnam Salimi is a multidisciplinary scientist studying the mechanism of health span and lifespan. She uses clinical and laboratory tools to define health and multimorbidity as the rate of aging and functional decline and response to stress. Her works evolved around determining clinically and biologically meaningful algorithms that measure the rate of aging, “omics” that track healthspan […]
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Departments
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
Dr. Schweppe’s research interests focus on the implementation of millisecond informatics to enable intelligent data acquisition strategies. His research group applies these technologies to quantify proteins as a readout for diverse cell states with broad interests spanning microbial protein interactions, small-molecule binding events, pre-clinical proteomics, and profiling primary tissue samples. Dr. Schweppe’s research group builds […]
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Departments
Electrical & Computer Engineering, Paul G. Allen School for Computer Science & Engineering
Roles
We are interested in understanding how biological organisms process information using complex biochemical networks and how such networks can be engineered to program cellular behavior. The focus of our research is the identification of systematic design rules for the de novo construction of biological control circuits. Our approach integrates the design of molecular circuitry in the test tube […]
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Departments
Biological Structure, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
Dr. Singhvi’s lab investigates the role of glia in neural function, aging and disease. Our nervous system has two major cell types, glia and neurons, in about equal numbers. Glia communicate with neurons to modulate neuron shape and function, and thereby neural circuit activity and animal behaviors. To define the molecular basis of neural aging, […]
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Departments
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
Cardiac metabolism and mitochondrial energetics The Tian Lab studies cell metabolism and mitochondrial function in living systems. Our goal is to improve cellular resistance to environmental stresses and diseases through engineering metabolism. […]
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Departments
Genome Sciences, Lab Medicine and Pathology, Medical Genetics
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
Age-associated changes in synaptic non-coding RNAs Dr. Valdmanis joined the University of Washington as an Assistant Professor in 2017. His lab studies genetic risk factors for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and gene therapy methods for therapeutic intervention. Through a series of studies focusing on long-read sequencing of the genome […]
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Departments
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BMHA Executive Committee, BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty, Proteomics Core Director, Shock Center Executive Committee
Dr. Villen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Genome Sciences. She earned her PhD in Chemistry from the University of Barcelona. During her postdoc at Harvard Medical School she was involved in several technology developments that enabled the robust characterization of thousands of phosphorylation sites: from biochemical methods to mass spectrometry acquisition strategies […]
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Departments
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
BiographyOscar Vivas, Ph.D., is a Junior Faculty in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Washington. Dr. Vivas is interested in understanding how aging alters the autonomic nervous system. Why the autonomic nervous system? As we age, we perceive a decline in our ability to maintain constant internal conditions (homeostasis) at rest […]
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Departments
Environmental Health and Occupational Health Sciences
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Artificial Intelligence and Bioinformatics Core, HALO Faculty
Dr. Wang has served as a biostatistician in the UW EDGE Center, the UW Center on Human Development and Disability, and UW Nathan Shock Center of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging. Dr. Wang has provided experimental design consultation, rigorous statistical analysis, and multi-omics data analyses (including transcriptomics, genomics, metabolomics, and proteomics) to numerous […]
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Departments
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
Yan is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Biology at the University of Washington,Seattle. She is a neuroscientist interested in the evolutionary and social dimensions of senescence. She uses emerging invertebrate model systems, such as the bee and the octopus, to investigate how the nervous system organizes, encodes, and mediates end-of-life transitions and death. Her […]
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Departments
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BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty
Dr. Wills joined the UW Biochemistry faculty as an Assistant Professor in 2015. Her research is focused on understanding the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms of regeneration using the diploid frog Xenopus tropicalis as a model organism. Loss of regenerative capacity is a fundamental aspect of aging biology. The Wills lab uses high-throughput sequencing approaches (RNA-Seq, ChIP-Seq, ATAC-Seq) […]
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Departments
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BMHA Co-Director, BMHA Training Faculty, Development Core Director, HALO Director, HALO Faculty, Shock Center Director, Shock Center Executive Committee, Training Program Alumnus
Dr. Young joined the UW faculty in 2016 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Lab Medicine and Pathology. Her research goal is to understand the molecular and biochemical mechanisms underlying age-related disorders, with a particular focus on neurodegenerative disorders. She has developed human stem cell models to further this line of research, as […]
