AJ is awarded a Ruth Kirchstein Predoctoral Fellowship!

Kudos to Meers Lab PhD student AJ Federico, who was awarded a Ruth Kirchstein NRSA F31 Predoctoral Fellowship by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at NIH! AJ proposed to tackle a challenging question: How do distinct chromatin states at the same genomic loci influence the binding and gene-regulatory functions of pioneer transcription factors? To answer this question, he will use tools developed in the lab for highly precise exogenous expression of the paradigmatic pioneer TF Forkhead Box A1 (FOXA1) in a variety of cell type-specific chromatin landscapes, and leverage machine learning techniques to predict chromatin state-dependent FOXA1 function. Congratulations AJ!