I am a Professor in the Department of Pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and a Member of the Broad Institute, where I co-direct the Epigenomics Program. My research focuses on epigenetics—changes in gene activity governed by influences outside the genes themselves. Specifically, we focus on how modifications to chromatin (a term for DNA and its protein scaffolding) contribute to mammalian development and human cancer.

My group has helped uncover key epigenetic mechanisms in pluripotent stem cells, developed experimental systems to identify enhancer “switches” in the human genome that coincide with sequence variants associated with common diseases, and contributed significantly to the characterization of epigenetic aberrations that underlie certain forms of cancer. We also investigate the epigenetic landscapes of human tumors and have identified epigenetic mechanisms that underlie malignant transformation, tumor propagation and drug resistance.

After receiving my M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington School of Medicine, I completed a residency in clinical pathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. I did my postdoctoral research at Harvard University with Stuart Schreiber and collaborated extensively with Eric Lander. My honors and awards include a Howard Hughes Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for Physicians, a Career Award in the Biomedical Sciences from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and election to the American Society for Clinical Investigation.