Dr. Tulsi Patel is an associate research scientist in the lab of Hynek Wichterle at Columbia University. She started her research career as an undergraduate at the University of Georgia, where she majored in Genetics and minored in Philosophy. As a Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities fellow, she worked in Dr. Scott Gold’s plant pathology lab and Dr. Steven Stice’s regenerative medicine lab. She performed her graduate work at Columbia University in Dr. Oliver Hobert’s neurodevelopment lab, where she studied how the plasticity of a cell’s transcriptome changes with age. This work formed the basis of her ongoing interest in understanding the temporal dynamics of neuronal identity. In her current work, Dr. Patel is studying how individual neuron types mature over time. Although most neurons are generated in a small window during fetal development, neuronal maturation is a drawn-out process that continues well into postnatal life. Dr. Patel is using genomics, computational, and cellular reprogramming methods to track gene expression changes during maturation, understand the underlying transcriptional regulation, and develop methods that recapitulate maturation in vitro. She hopes to continue this work in her independent lab with the ultimate goal of better understanding the age-specificity of neurological diseases.
Read the RFAs:
- BRAIN Initiative Advanced Postdoctoral Career Transition Award to Promote Diversity (K99/R00 Independent Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
- BRAIN Initiative Advanced Postdoctoral Career Transition Award to Promote Diversity (K99/R00 Independent Clinical Trial Required)
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