GAELEN HESS JOINS THE FACULTY OF CHGPM AND BIOMOLECULAR CHEMISTRY AS NEW ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
Center for Human Genomics and Precision Medicine and the Department of Biomolecular Chemistry are pleased to announce that Gaelen Hess of Stanford University will be joining our faculty as an assistant professor in March 2021. As a postdoctoral scholar in the lab of Michael Bassik, Stanford University, Dr. Hess brings a wealth of expertise in understanding the effects of genetic perturbations to the area of precision medicine. He has combined his background in engineering and genome-editing to systematically measure these effects. He developed the novel genome-editing technology, CRISPR-X, which performs targeted diversification at endogenous loci using the somatic hypermutation machinery. This targeted installation of point mutations enables the identification and functional annotation of genetic variants including the dissection of mechanisms of drug resistance. In addition to this technology, he has employed high-throughput screening platforms to investigate the function of genes, SNPs, and protein variants in mammalian cells.
In his future work, he will build new functional genomics tools to dissect the link between genotype and phenotype. Using these tools, he will investigate mechanisms of DNA repair, therapeutic response, and pathogens, which will enhance the treatment and diagnosis of patients.
Dr. Hess hails from Missouri. He received his undergraduate degree in chemistry and physics from Harvard University and then his Ph.D. in Biophysics, also from Harvard University while studying with Angela Belcher from MIT. For his thesis work, he established a labeling method for M13 bacteriophage to generate higher-order nano-material scaffolds and led a project to employ high-throughput sequencing for improved peptide phage display.
We look forward to welcoming Dr. Hess in March. His lab will be housed in the new Center for Human Genomics and Precision Medicine, located in the new WIMR west wedge.
CHGPM RECEIVES FUNDING FROM THE UW2020 AWARD.
The goal of the UW2020 is to help fund groundbreaking research at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Those projects that are awarded the UW2020 have the potential to transform a field of study. CHGPM’s Stephen Meyn in partnership with the UW Biotechnology Center’s Chris Bradford and Joshua Hyman was awarded this year’s grant to get the de novo human genome assembly project up and running. See the whole story here