Hi there! I’m a postdoctoral researcher studying how gene regulation is encoded in humans. To that end I’m using synthetic biology, stem cells and deep learning as tools. I am affiliated with the lab of Carl de Boer located in the School of Biomedical Engineering at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, Canada.

Current research

Human DNA contains genes that provide instructions for making proteins that are essential for life. However, genes alone aren’t enough – they need switches that control when and where they turn on or off. These switches -special DNA regions - are called enhancers. When enhancers malfunction due to genetic changes, it can lead to disease. In fact, 91% of disease-related genetic variations occur outside of gene regions and are found more than expected by chance in these enhancer regions.

Yet, we are currently lacking the deep understanding of enhancers activity to interpret how genetic variation in enhancers affect our health.

To improve our understanding of human enhancers at the molecular level I’m leveraging recent advances in synthetic biology, stem cell biology and deep learning.

Previous research

I was a PhD student in the lab of Claire Rougeulle at Université Paris Cité, in Paris, France, where I worked on the evolution of gene regulatory networks and X Chromosome Inactivation in Primates. If you want to know more, you can check out my PhD dissertation online.