We are pleased to welcome
Professor Fei Chen
of the Broad Institute and Harvard University
as our 2021-22 Rising Star speaker
March 16, 2022
Fei Chen
Core Member, Broad Institute, MIT
Assistant Professor, Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, Harvard University
“Tissue genomics: genomic measurements in context”
Abstract:
Tissue functions are highly cell non-autonomous. While single-cell analysis has begun to elucidate the cellular components that participate in tissue function and dysfunction; interactions – and their spatial variation across tissue structures – remain challenging to explore. Here, we’ll describe advances in situ and single cell transcriptomic sequencing tools which aim to capture both the spatial context of cells as well as their dynamics within tissues. We will describe efforts to apply these tools to measure, model and manipulate the rules of tissue organization in developmental and disease contexts. More broadly, we’ll discuss the promise and challenges of spatial transcriptomics for tissue genomics.
Biography:
During the course of his doctoral research, Chen co-invented Expansion Microscopy, a breakthrough technique that allows for super-resolution imaging of biological samples with conventional light microscopes. As an independent fellow at the Broad Institute, he led a group which bridged microscopy with next generation sequencing through in situ sequencing and Slide-seq technologies. In his current group, he continues to pioneer novel molecular and microscopy tools to uniquely illuminate biological pathways and function.
Chen was an Axline scholar at the California Institute of Technology and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. He obtained his Ph.D. in biological engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was funded by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and the MIT Viterbi and Poitras Fellowships. Following his graduate studies, Chen was a fellow in the Schmidt Fellows program at the Broad. His awards include the National Institutes of Health Director’s Early Independence Award and the Allen Distinguished Investigator Award.
Past Rising Stars
2020-21
Tim Downing
Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, UC Irvine
PhD Berkeley-UCSF Graduate Program in Bioengineering, 2013
“Synthetic Genome Regulation for Cell and Tissue Engineering”
2019-20
Professor Krishanu Saha
Associate Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering & Wisconsin Institute for Discovery
“Towards nonviral, in vivo genome editing therapies: new tools and models to facilitate translation”
2017-18
Professor Stanley Qi of Stanford University
2016-17
Professor Kim Woodrow of the University of Washington
“Engineering the mucosal microenvironment promotes targeting of particulate and cellular immunotherapies to lymphoid organs”