We are fortunate to receive one of the 7 NIH Director's Transformative Research Awards awarded across the US in 2024 for High Risk High Reward research for "transformative projects that are inherently risky and untested but have the potential to create or overturn fundamental paradigms".
This award will support the lab until 2029. Thank you NIH. 
Congrats to Domenic on a new collaborative paper with Gavin Schlissel and Pulin Li, using single-molecule tracking in reconstituted systems to understand the diffusion mechanisms that govern morphogen gradients. Read the full paper in PNAS.
Congratulations to Viraat on a new collaborative preprint with Nick Aboreden and Gerd Blobel, demonstrating that LDB1 is a true enhancer-promoter looping factor. Viraat contributed RCMC.
Read the full version on BioRxiv.   It was bittersweet to celebrate and say farewell to Christos, who is off to Columbia University for his PhD. But at least he has a new clock to make sure that he remembers us all.
Over the last two years as a Technical Associate, Christos has kept the lab running while making great research strides. Stay tuned for his main project, but Christos also set the record for most FRAP movies recorded for his collaborative preprint with Jane Skok's lab. Come back and visit us often!  Congratulations to Ava who did a great job presenting her summer research with Sumin at the MIT Summer Research Program (MSRP) poster presentation session. It was great having you here this summer and all the best for your final year at Howard!
We are thrilled to welcome Jacob Kæstel-Hansen and Daria Sels to the lab this Summer.
Jacob joins us as a post-doc with a Novo-Nordisk Foundation Post-doctoral Fellowship, having just completed his PhD at the University of Copenhagen in nanoscience and machine learning. During his PhD, Jacob developed a number of new computational tools for analysis of microscopy movies and trajectories using machine learning and other approaches and Jacob will continue in this vein here applying his expertise to understand the 3D genome. Welcome Jacob! Daria joins us for her Master's thesis as part of her studies at the University of Brussels. Daria will be working with Michele on understanding distal gene regulation in the context of neuronal development. Welcome Daria!  Thanks to Michele for once again leading the annual lab photoshoot, this year in front of the main MIT building on Mass Ave.
 Our lab potluck was a success, filled with delicious dishes from around the world. We enjoyed fun conversations and nice food!
We are excited to welcome Ava and Vicky who started earlier in June.
Ava joins us from the MIT Summer Research Program and is working with Sumin on understanding Polycomb bodies. Vicky joins us from the MIT BE graduate program for a summer rotation. |
Hansen Lab at MIT, Building 56, Room 722, 32 Vassar St, Cambridge, MA 02139; Accessibility