Faculty Research

Our Faculty

The research interests of the genetics faculty span a wide variety of important and cutting-edge areas of genetics and genomics and include cancer, cellular, computational, developmental, evolutionary, expression regulation, molecular, neuropsychiatric, population, reproductive, statistical, epigenetics, and neurogenetics. Research is being conducted in humans, mice, zebrafish, fruit flies, nematodes, yeast, and bacteria. We also have faculty working in computational and statistical genetics and bioinformatics. For a complete faculty listing and detailed research descriptions, see our faculty list.

Members of the faculty have received competitive research grants from several institutes within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), as well as the State of New Jersey and numerous private foundations such as the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, the Simons Foundation, Autism Speaks, the March of Dimes, and many others.

Title	Position	Research Focus
David Axelrod	Emeritus Professor	Cell and Molecular Oncology. Breast Cancer. Colon Cancer
Marco Azaro	Assistant Research Professor
Maureen Barr	Distinguished Professor	Modeling human genetic diseases in C. elegans
Christina Bergey	Assistant Professor	Evolutionary genomics of humans, non-human primates, and disease vectors
Chris Ellison	Associate Professor	Evolutionary genomics and genome organization in Drosophila
Oleg Evgrafov
Derek Gordon	Associate Professor	Statistical genetics
Gary A. Heiman	Professor- Vice- Chair & Undergraduate Director	Genetic epidemiology of neuropsychiatric disorders
Devanshi Jain	Assistant Professor	Gametogenesis and Genome Integrity
James A. Knowles, M.D., Ph.D.
Tara Matise	Distinguished Professor-Chair, Department of Genetics	Computational Human Genetics, genetics coordinating center
Kim McKim	Professor	Molecular Genetics of Meiotic Recombination in Drosophila Melanogaster
Tetsuya Nakamura	Assistant Professor	Revealing the genetic mechanisms of the fish diversity and their contribution to the fish-to-tetrapod transition
Bryce Nickels	Professor	Regulation of gene expression in bacteria
Jessica Rispoli	Associate Teaching Professor, Director of the Genetic Counseling Master's Program	Genetic Counseling
Christopher Rongo	Professor	Molecular genetics of synapse formation and plasticity in C. elegans
Amrik Sahota	Emeritus Professor	Human Molecular Genetics; Molecular Diagnostics
Karen Schindler	Professor	Understanding the molecular mechanisms that lead to aneuploidy in female gametes
Christine Seymour	Assistant Program Director	Genetic Counseling Master's Program
Gleb Shumyatsky	Professor	Molecular and cellular mechanisms of memory as well as social and maternal behavior
Andrew Singson	Professor	Reproductive biology and cell-cell interactions in C. elegans
Jay Tischfield	Distinguished Professor, Department of Genetics Executive Director, HGINJ	Medical and human genetics: the genetics of somatic cells, mouse models for human diseases and genes for complex human genetic disorders
Michael Verzi	Professor	Transcriptional Regulatory Mechanisms in Intestinal Disease
Juan Wang	Assistant Research Professor
Jinchuan Xing	Professor	Mobile Elements, Human Genomic Variation, Evolutionary Genetics, Population Genetics
Samhita Yadavalli	Assistant Professor	Bacterial signaling pathways and regulation of gene expression.
Jiekun Yang	Assistant Professor	Computational Genomics to Dissect Myeloid Cell Circuitry in Health and Disease.
Lei Yu	Distinguished Professor	Genetics of compulsive behaviors (such as alcoholism and drug addiction) and neuro-sensory disorders (such as neuropathic pain)