GSI Past Seminars
The GSI has invited a number of distinguished speakers to speak to BUMC faculty, staff and students, and the surrounding community. Below is a list of recent speakers that have presented their research and have engaged in our scientific community. If you are interested in receiving regular updates on GSI initiatives such as upcoming seminars, workshops, and symposiums, please email gsi@bu.edu to be added to our mailing list.
Spring 2026
| Date | Speaker | Title |
| January 13th, 2026 | Craig Ceol, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Molecular, Cell and Cancer Biology, UMass Chan Medical School | “BMPing into melanoma: targeting BMP-driven melanoma progression” |
| January 20th, 2026 | Kaitlyn Alimenti, 4th Year PhD student – Dr. Michael Blower lab | “A novel method for mapping rna: chromatin interaction sites at genome wide resolution” |
| February 3rd, 2026 | Ali Gulhan, 3rd Year PhD student – Dr. Lindsay Farrer lab | “HSV-1 Infection Is Associated with Reduced Alzheimer’s Disease Related Atrophy and Altered Brain Transcriptomic Signatures” |
| February 11th, 2026 | Robert C. Green, MD, MPH, Professor, Medicine | “Universal Newborn Sequencing and Lifelong Genomic Medicine“ |
| February 17th, 2026 | Abigail Fowler, 3rd Year PhD student – Dr. Tuan Leng Tay lab | “Impact of peripheral inflammation on Alzheimer’s Disease Progression” |
| March 17th, 2026 | Sanjana Bhagavatula, 3rd Year PhD student – Dr. Stefano Monti’s lab | “Integrated Analysis of the Tumor Microenvironment and Aging in Head and Neck Cancer.” |
| March 24th, 2026 | Owen Sanborn, 4th Year PhD student – Dr. Daniel Cifuentes lab | “Disruption of miRNA targeting fidelity by AGO2 mutations drives the LESKRES neurodevelopmental syndrome” |
| March 31st, 2026 | Keyu (Chloe) Li, 2nd Year PhD student – Dr. Valentina Perissi’s lab | “NEURL4-dependent ADP-ribosylation as a post-translational switch regulating mitochondrial function.” |
| April 14th, 2026 | Ryan Collins, PhD, Instructor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School | “What can population genomics teach us about cancer predisposition and tumorigenesis?” |
| April 28th, 2026 | Kaifu Chen, PhD, Associate Professor of Pediatrics | “AI-powered discovery of cell identity regulators in differentiation, development, and diseases.” |
| May 26th, 2026 | 10X Genomics | “10X Genomics Xenium Seminar: Push Spatial Boundaries with Subcellular Resolution.” |
Fall 2025
| Date | Speaker | Title |
| September 24th, 2025 | 10x Genomics | “Launch of the BU Spatial Transcriptomics Core “ |
| September 30th, 2025 | Stephanie E. Mohr, PhD, Director of DRSC/TRiP-FGR | “Genome-wide CRISPR-Cas9 Screening in Mosquito and other Arthropod Cell Lines” |
| October 7th, 2025 | Haiyuan (Henry) Sun, 3rd Year PhD student – Dr. Finn Hawkins lab | “Enhancing Airway Stem Cell Engraftment for Early, Targeted Intervention in Chronic Airway Disease” |
| October 21st, 2025 | Deborah Lang, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Dermatology, Boston University | “Transcriptional and Post-Transcriptional Drivers of Melanoma” |
| October 28th, 2025 | Margot Barroso Zuppa, 3rd Year PhD student – Dr. Ignaty Leshchiner lab | “Clonal selection in treatment of minimal residual disease in chronic lymphocytic leukemia” |
| November 4th, 2025 | 10X Genomics | “10x GEM-X Flex Bioinformatics Workshop” |
| November 18th, 2025 | Emily Kirchner, 3rd Year PhD student – Dr. Philipp Mews lab | “Metabolic Control of Histone Methylation in Learning and Memory” |
| December 2nd, 2025 | Ruben Dries, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Hematology & Medical Oncology | “Opportunities and Challenges in spatial omics cancer research” |
| December 9th, 2025 | Özge Getkin, DVM, MA, Sr Account Executive, Spatial Genomics, Takara Bio
Nick Wysocki, Territory Manager, Takara Bio |
“Advancing RNA-seq solutions to accelerate discovery” |
Previous Years:
May 6th, 2025
Sarah Hainer, PhD, University of Pittsburgh
April 30th, 2025
Rameen Beroukhim, MD, PhD, Harvard Medical Center
April 22nd, 2025
Lucas Edelman, PhD, CS Genetics
March 25th, 2025
Julianna Crivello, 10x Genomics
March 18th, 2025
Vicky Yao, PhD, Rice UniversityIntegrative methods for the analysis of complex traits and diseases
February 4th, 2025
Dmitry Leyfer, PhD
Adam Labadorf, PhD
Nelson Lau, PhD
Q & A Session – BMSIP & GSI Pilot Grant
January 28th, 2025
Meghan Kilcoyne
Legislative Advocacy in Cancer Care & Patient Access Biomarker Testing Legislation
January 21st, 2025
LevitasBio
Levitation Technology Fuels and Improves Single-Cell Data
December 10th, 2024
Michael Baym, PhD, Harvard Medical School
Plasmid Ecology
November 25th, 2024
Bess Frost, PhD, Brown University
Retrotransposon activation in neurodegenerative tauopathy
October 29th, 2024
Eric Lai, PhD, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
RNA Silencing: from mechanisms to biology
October 22nd, 2024
Illumina
Moving beyond the Genome with Illumina Technology
September 24th, 2024
Active Motif
Advances in Epigenomics: New Applications for Targeted Analysis & Discovery
September 10th, 2024
Singular Genomics Seminar
May 28th, 2024
Qiagen IPA Training Seminar
April 12th, 2024
Geoff Rosenfield, PhD, UC San Diego School of Medicine
How the Endocrine/Paracrine System “Leaps the Minotaur” to Activate the Enhancer Labyrinth
April 9th, 2024
William Mair, PhD, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Metabolic Flexibility and Healthy Aging
March 19th, 2024
Julianna Crivello, 10x Genomics
March 5th, 2024
Fei Chen, PhD, Board Institute of MIT and Harvard
Genomic tools for probing the rules of tissue organization
February 7th, 2024
Lindsay Barrett, PhD, Board Institute of MIT and Harvard
Leveraging iPSC models to study neural development and disease
January 23rd, 2024
Stephan Issac, PhD, Harvard Medical School of Genetics
Structure and packaging of the polyploid mitochondrial genome
January 16th, 2024
Pravrutha Raman, PhD, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
Evolution innovations in eukaryotic histone repertoires drive biological novelties
January 9th, 2024
Valentina Cigliola, PhD, Université Côte d’Azur – Institut de Biologie Valrose
Innate Mechanisms of Spinal Cord Regeneration
December 5th, 2023
Nora Martin, Scale Biosciences Technology Seminar
Single Cell Biology using Combinatorial Indexing at ScaleBio: scRNA & scMethylation
October 17th, 2023
Rachel O’Neill, PhD, University of Connecticut Molecular & Cellular Biology
Using T2T scale genomics to study centromere function and chromosome evolution
October 3rd, 2023
Winston Timp, PhD, John Hopkins University College of Biomedical Engineering
Beyond Assembly: The increasing flexibility of single molecule sequencing
September 26th, 2023
Sara Rouhanifard, PhD, Northeastern University College of Engineering
September 12th, 2023
Caroline Petersen, 10x Genomics
Go where single cell has never gone before
August 21st, 2023
Alper Akay, PhD, University of East Anglia
U6 snRNA m6A modification is required for accurate and efficient cis- and trans-splicing of C. elegans mRNAs
May 2, 2023
ACD Bio
Visualize Gene Expression In Situ With RNAscope
April 19, 2023
Hong Zhou, PhD, University of California, Los Angeles
SPLIT-Seq Presentation
April 4, 2023
William Hwang, MD, PhD, Harvard Medical School
Therapeutic resistance and tumor-nerve interactions in pancreatic cancer elucidated by single-cell, spatial, and functional genomics
March 7, 2023
Scott Magin and Kristen O’Malley, QIAGEN
IPA Technology Seminar
February 7, 2023
Michael-Christopher Keogh, PhD, EpiCypher
Cut & Presentation
January 24, 2023
Joseph Kelly, Parse Biosciences
SPLIT-Seq Presentation
November 29, 2022
Rupa Sridharan, PhD, University of Wisconsin
Manipulating the epigenome to enable a change in cell identity
November 21, 2022
Yukiko Yamashita, PhD, MIT
Immortal Germline
October 11, 2022
Chonghui Cheng, MD, PhD, Baylor College of Medicine
Deconvoluting alternative RNA splicing in breast cancer metastasis
September 20, 2022
Ignaty Leshchiner, PhD, Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine
Clonal heterogeneity, composition and resistance: from premalignancy to drug refractory disease
May 18, 2022
Jada Benn Torres, PhD, Vanderbilt University
Genomic ancestry and cultural identities – case studies of community engaged genomics in the Caribbean
April 27, 2022
Kathleen Burns, MD, PhD, Harvard Medical School, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Transposable elements in cancer
March 23, 2022
Lee Zou, PhD, Harvard Medical School, MGH Cancer Center, Massachusetts General Hospital
Impacts of transcription on DNA break repair
February 8, 2022
Sumana Chintalapudi, PhD, QIAGEN Digital Insights
Ingenuity Pathway (IPA) Virtual Training
December 15, 2021
Vadim N. Gladyshev, PhD, Division of Genetics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School
Quantifying and Manipulating the Aging Process
November 18, 2021
13th Annual GSI Research Symposium
October 13, 2021
Christopher Benner, PhD, School of Medicine, University of California – San Diego
Decoding regulatory DNA controlling host defense responses
September 15, 2021
The 10x Genetics Team
Envision New Dimensions: Spatial Mapping of the Transcriptome from FFPE Preserved Tissues Assay intro and workflow implementation
May 19th, 2021
Sumana Chintalapudi, QIAGEN Digital Insights
Ingenuity Pathway (IPA) Virtual Training
April 14th, 2021
Anthony Leung, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University
Compositional control of cellular condensates during virus infection
March 24th, 2021
Carl Novina, Harvard Medical School, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT
Lnc’ing non-coding RNA function to bone marrow failure
February 17th, 2021
Yana Bromberg, Rutgers, Technical University of Munich, Board of Directors of the International Society for Computational Biology
Decoding the DNA blueprints of human and microbiome molecular functionality
December 2nd, 2020
Kate Jeffrey, Harvard Medical School, MGH, Broad Institute
Epigenome and Virome immunomodulation in the gut
October 21st, 2020
Vera Gorbunova, Rochester Aging Research Center, U of Rochester
Mechanisms of longevity in long-lived mammals
September 23rd, 2020
Pepper J. Schedin, Oregon Health & Science University
Young Women’s Breast Cancer: Bench to Population Science and Back Again
March 11th, 2020
Rosha Poudyal, 10x Genomics
Single-Cell ATAC-Seq: Understanding chromatin remodeling at single-cell resolution.
February 5th, 2020
Eric Seiser, Qiagen
Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) Training: New to IPA and Advanced Functionalities QIAGEN Digital Insights
December 4th, 2019
Mary Goll, University of Georgia
Chromatin regulation in development and disease
October 23rd, 2019
Daniel Promislow, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
“The Dog Aging Project: Learning New Tricks from Old Dogs”
October 9th, 2019
Jeffrey Moffitt, Harvard Medical School, Boston Children’s Hospital
“Imaging the transcriptome with MERFISH”
September 25th, 2019
Robert Kingston, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital
“Chromatin compaction, phase separation, and Polycomb-Group function during mammalian development”
May 22nd, 2019
Leonard Zon, Harvard Medical School, Boston Children’s Hospital
Pathways regulating hematopoietic stem cell self-renewal and migration.
April 10th, 2019
Rinath M. Jeselsohn, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School
“The Estrogen Receptor Mutations in Endocrine Resistance in Breast Cancer”
March 20th, 2019
John Kim, Johns Hopkins University
Small RNAs and non-canonical RBPs in worms and yeast
January 16th, 2019
Frank Slack, Harvard Medical School
MicroRNAs for Personalized Medicine in Cancer
December 10th, 2018
Geoffrey Rosenfeld, HHMI, University of California, San Diego
The Secret Lives of Enhancers
October 17th, 2018
Juan Fuxman Bass, BU Charles River Campus
Gene Regulatory Network Wiring and Rewiring in Disease
September 19th, 2018
John Doench, The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
Genetics Screens with CRISPR Technology
May 15th, 2018
Alexander Gimelbrant, Harvard Medical School
Non-Drugging the Transcriptome, one Allele at a Time
April 17th, 2018
Kasandra Burgos, 10x Genomics
Single-Cell Genomics: Analyzing Complex Cell Populations
March 20th, 2018
Karen Adelman, Harvard Medical School
Making Sense of Non-Coding Transcription
February 20th, 2018
Michael G. Smith, Illumina
Using Illumina’s Next Generation Sequencing Technology to Understand Genomes and Gene Expression
January 16th, 2018
Nathan Lawson, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester
Genetic and Genomic Analysis of Vascular Development in the Zebrafish
December 19th, 2017
Uttiya Basu, Columbia University
Genome Organization and Noncoding RNA Transcription in B cell Immunity and Cancer
November 21th, 2017
Alex Shalek, Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard
Approaching the Immune System as an Interacting Ensemble of Cells
October 17th, 2017
Mauro Calabrese, UNC Chapel Hill
Mechanisms of Gene Silencing by Long Noncoding RNAs